


Here Lies the Abyss

by monkeycat



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, But so can Alistair, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Grey Warden Secrets, Grief/Mourning, Hawke can be an asshole, Here Lies the Abyss, Secrets are unhealthy, Sexual Tension, lots of bickering, so many secrets
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:22:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 51,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24841489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monkeycat/pseuds/monkeycat
Summary: Alistair first encounters Hawke three years after the end of the Fifth Blight, in the midst of the Qunari attack on Kirkwall. Both part with less than favorable impressions of each other, but neither give it much thought, assuming that their first meeting will be their last. Little do they know that their paths will cross again almost a decade later, when Thedas is once more plunged into crisis. Their uneasy alliance is fraught with hostility and distrust. While Alistair is loath to share Warden secrets with the infamously reckless Champion of Kirkwall, Hawke finds it almost impossible to trust any Grey Warden given her family history with the order. But eventually they are forced to admit that they must either put aside their differences and unite against a common enemy – or risk seeing the destruction of everything they have fought all their lives to protect.
Relationships: Alistair/Amell (Dragon Age), Alistair/Female Hawke, Alistair/Female Warden (Dragon Age), Anders/Female Hawke
Comments: 14
Kudos: 18





	1. Hunger for a Forgotten Face

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alistair: A chance encounter in Kirkwall re-opens a wound barely healed.

It takes Alistair less than half an hour to conclude that The Hanged Man deserves the honor of “Seediest Tavern in Thedas.” It’s hard to put a finger on what sets it apart. On the surface, it is no different from all the other fine establishments he’s had the dubious pleasure of visiting over the years. The floorboards have acquired a dull, greasy patina of dirt, spilt ale, and Maker only knows what else. The air is stale and thick, much like the patrons. Grouchy serving girls, sour ale, and a general aura of apathy and despair: all present and accounted for.

But there is something more here, and after some reflection Alistair decides it’s not just The Hanged Man but Kirkwall as a whole. The entire _city_ reeks of despair, like a cheap cheese already gone bad. There is a tension in the air that has him on edge. Or perhaps it’s just the stew he’s just had for lunch, sitting uncomfortably in his stomach. Mystery Meat Masquerading as Pigeon seems to be a staple of tavern menus. A staple he should have known better than to order, but a fortnight of hard jerky and stale bread drives even the most prudent of men to desperation.

He sees Alyne making her way back from the bar, determinedly ignoring the leering men that she must push past to rejoin their table. Alistair offers up a quick prayer that none of the louts open their mouths or, Maker forbid, try to lay hands on her. They are strangers in a hostile place, and he doesn’t relish the prospect of having to explain to the local guard why one of his Wardens has castrated an unarmed drunkard. Thankfully everyone’s vital appendages are still intact when she reaches their table.

“This is the right tavern. But the dwarf isn’t here right now.” Alyne crosses her arms, clearly displeased. “The barkeep has no idea when he’ll be back.”

“But this _is_ his residence.” Alistair prods.

“Yes.” Alyne manages to convey deep contempt through that one syllable. But then again, she is Orlesian. Expressing contempt is something Orlesians have down to a fine art, along with looking disdainfully down their noses and producing some truly stinky cheeses. “Are you sure we have the right dwarf, Alistair? Why would someone with his reputation stay in a shithole like this?”

“What’s wrong with this shithole?” Gavin is already on his third ale, which has put him in a generous mood. With his unkempt beard and overall disheveled appearance he could easily be mistaken for one of the locals, if it weren’t for his blue and silver Warden armor. This is hardly surprising, seeing as Gavin is a Kirkwall native. The general squalor of the city seems to suit him just fine.

“The ale is wet and cheap, just like the wenches. What more does a man need?” He chuckles with immense pleasure at his own joke.

Alyne is unamused. Her dark eyes narrow with the beginnings of her legendary temper, and her hand twitches towards her daggers. Alistair has to stop himself from banging his head against the table in a desperate attempt to distract her. Gavin is an uncouth lout even by non-Orlesian standards, but Grey Wardens can’t be choosy about who joins their ranks, and lewd remarks are not grounds for an execution. Else half the Wardens would probably have lost their heads by now. He can sense the remaining three junior Wardens staring at him in anticipation, no doubt wondering how their fearless leader will stop Alyne from slicing Gavin into strips and adding him to the tavern’s stew pot.

With an inward sigh he thinks fondly back to last week, when they were all marching through the bowels of the Primeval Thaig. Battling darkspawn and demons with the damp miasma of decay filling their nostrils meant that everyone was too bent on staying alive to bicker amongst themselves. Nothing like the imminent threat of ending up in a hurloc’s belly to bring people together.

Unfortunately, there is no convenient hurloc at hand, so Alistair must resort to using his wits. A chancy weapon at the best of times.

“The only part of you they’re interested in is your coin purse, Gavin, and at the moment it’s just as disappointing as the rest of you.”

Gavin guffaws, but thankfully fills his mouth with ale rather than any more of his filthy jests. Alistair then turns and gives Alyne the sternest look he can muster. He is the senior Warden of this company, a veteran of the Fifth Blight, but half the time he still feels like an imposter and a fraud. Miraculously she drops her eyes and sits down with a toss of her sable curls, bottling her anger into a muttered curse under her breath.

Alistair swallows an undignified sigh of relief. “Did you ask the barkeep about Hawke as well?”

“Yes.” Alyne nods shortly. “Hawke and Tethras are close friends, according to the barkeep, but she lives in Hightown.” Gavin gives a low whistle of surprise at the mention of Kirkwall’s wealthiest district. “And there’s another one that hangs around here, some former pirate named Isabela that is also associated with the two of them.” She says _former pirate_ with the same disgusted inflection another person might pronounce the word _vermin._ “ _She’s_ not here either. He says they gather here most nights to play Wicked Grace, if we care to wait until dark.”

A pirate named Isabela. For some reason that tugs at a dusty memory half-buried. A brothel in Denerim, and a game of Wicked Grace. Solona smiling her disarmingly wide smile while Leliana whispers in her ear.

He thrusts the memory away from him with the haste of a man dropping a red-hot poker. Alyne is asking him a question, and it takes him a moment to re-focus. She wants to know if he thinks they should get rooms at the Hanged Man for the night.

“Yes,” he answers absently. “We’ll see if Tethras or this pirate Isabela shows up later, and if they don’t, we’ll make more inquiries about Hawke tomorrow. If she lives in Hightown, she can’t be that hard to track down.”

“Maybe we can get out and explore the city some more tonight. I can give you a tour.” Gavin’s unsavory grin makes it abundantly clear what kind of exploring he has in mind. The kind that will find him sleeping off a hangover in a random gutter, and that’s if he’s lucky.

The junior Wardens look at Alistair hopefully, no doubt wondering if they’ll get a rare and welcome break from their duties. Alistair would normally indulge the poor bastards, but he doesn’t feel comfortable sending his Wardens into the night and the unknown perils of a strange city, especially one like Kirkwall. The monsters that lurk in the shadows here are no less dangerous than those they faced in the Deep Roads, for all their human faces.

He shakes his head. “I regret to inform you that your exploring will have to be contained to the four walls of this fine establishment.”

At this, Gavin develops a rather sullen pout, which looks frankly ridiculous on a grown man with a bushy beard. Alistair wants to pat him on the head, the way you would comfort a child sulking over being denied a sweet. Instead he adds, “We’ll order another round of this excellent ale, and then the rest of you can put your feet up. I’ll keep an eye on the door for the next few hours. Alayne, if you would be so kind as to secure us a few rooms.”

The junior Wardens chime a chorus of thank yous, while Gavin perks up at the thought of drinking more ale bought with someone else’s coin. The man is easy to please. Alyne, not so much. Her brows draw together, and it’s clear her disapproval of this plan is warring with her reluctance to disagree with the ranking senior Warden in front of the others.

Alistair gives her his best level look. He tries to remember the look his mentor Duncan used: the stern, dignified look that was a more eloquent reprimand than any number of words. She glances away and stalks back towards the bar, muttering something he charitably decides not to hear.

Once the ale comes, Gavin drifts away with his mug and strikes up a conversation with a group of off-duty city guards. Soon they are laughing and swapping stories like long-lost comrades. Alyne has stomped off to check on their lodgings. The junior Wardens chat amongst themselves, a tight knot at the other end of the table. They are young and self-absorbed enough that it never occurs to them they are being rude by not including Alistair in their conversation. But he doesn’t mind being left alone with his thoughts. He swigs his awful ale and idly wonders if they’ll get to meet the infamous Hawke tonight.

They’ve come to Kirkwall on nothing but rumors, which is the reason for Alyne’s less than cooperative attitude. Their only task was to investigate the Primeval Thaig, and they’ve fulfilled their mission to the letter, though they’ve little to show for it. The red lyrium in the thaig was like nothing Alistair had ever seen, glowing crimson and malevolent in the ancient darkness. Even now he can almost hear the faintest of voices at the very edges of his awareness, incomprehensible snatches of song that trail slow, cold fingers inside his skull, making him shiver with unease and – even worse – desire. He has no explanation for how the red lyrium can affect him in this way, and he doesn’t particularly want one. He’d absolutely forbidden his Wardens from harvesting it or even touching it. If the First Warden wishes to explore the subject further, they are most welcome to send others. Alistair knows he won’t be volunteering for a second expedition, and he plans to recommend all entrances to the thaig be sealed completely and forever, complete with signs stating “DO NOT ENTER OR VERY BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN TO YOU” posted to warn would-be adventurers. 

With their mission complete, Alistair knows he should be leading the Wardens straight back to report to the current Warden Commander at Vigil’s Keep. But the whole reason the Grey Wardens had learned about this thaig in the first place was that it had been discovered not too long ago by a treasure hunting party. Alistair has received no orders about trying to contact the intrepid adventurers, but neither has anyone expressly forbidden him from doing so.

So here he is in Kirkwall, chasing down a ridiculous story of a woman named Hawke, who somehow managed to escape the thaig with her companions after they’d been betrayed and left for dead. (He hopes that her odd name doesn’t mean she is prone to swooping. Swooping is… bad.) Everyone in Kirkwall seems to know her – or know of her, at any rate. She is alternately described as a champion of the downtrodden and a bloodthirsty mercenary who would happily sell out her own grandmother for a bit of coin. Alistair assumes the truth lies somewhere in-between. Perhaps she is only mildly bloodthirsty, or she is considerate enough to limit her bloodthirsty activities to Tuesdays.

The rumors also speak of Varric Tethras, one of her companions, and his brother, Bertrand, who is supposedly the one who abandoned them all in the thaig. Apparently, Bertrand himself is now dead. Gossip whispers that Varric and Hawke killed him in his own house as revenge for his betrayal. Some also insist that Bertrand was driven mad by what he saw down in the Primeval Thaig. That rumor disturbs Alistair more than anything. He finds it extremely unlikely the dwarf was driven mad by the mere sight of the thaig’s inhabitants – Alistair and his Wardens encountered nothing with that kind of power during their own explorations. But the red lyrium with its disturbingly seductive glow lingers in Alistair’s mind, and he wonders if Bertrand may have harvested it in the hopes that it would end up being profitable. Could it have driven him to the point of insanity, or turned him into a danger that had to be put down?

It is a far-fetched theory, and one he knows his superiors would not put much credence in. But he is curious, and as senior Warden he has the authority to pursue this line of inquiry if he wishes, even if Alyne continues to treat him as a half-wit barely fit to lead a horse to water.

The name Isabela is still tickling the edges of his mind, and he reluctantly picks up the memory that took him unawares, like a man gingerly holding a venomous snake at arm’s length. It’s been three years since her death, but any memory involving Solona still has the power to crush the air from his lungs with the sheer weight of bitterness and grief. He tries to reconstruct the memory in a way that carefully leaves Solona’s face as a comforting blur, and he is only partly successful. He remembers the common room of The Pearl, all the way down to the tacky red velvet furnishings and paintings of busty half-clad maidens on the walls, and the breezily charming pirate captain with her dusky skin and knowing smile. She had flirted shamelessly, all but inviting Solona into her bed, and Alistair inadvertently remembers how the thought of his Solona, with her long red-brown hair and dark green eyes, intertwining her slender limbs with this buxom, dark-skinned stranger, had filled with him with a heady, potent mixture of jealousy and desire.

The memory has become too vivid, and he quickly shakes his head and washes it away by pouring the rest of his lukewarm ale down his throat. He feels a rueful smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. The platitude that time heals all wounds has been repeated to him so many times he’s lost count, but no one ever seems willing to specify how much time. One year? Five? A decade? A lifetime? In the year after Solona’s death, the wound was raw, and every time someone mentioned her name he could barely keep himself from curling into a ball around the searing pain that seemed to be burnt into his very soul. It had made things extremely awkward at parties, when people would crowd around him and pepper him with questions about the fabled Hero of Ferelden. Their expectations of exciting tales of adventure and sacrifice were always dashed the moment Alistair started blubbering like a half-wit.

Now, the grief is easier to contain within himself, and the wound has hardened into a twisted scar that no longer dominates every second of his existence. It’s only taken three years. Perhaps in another three, his memories of her will lose their jaggedly sharp edges, and he can think of her face again without wanting to weep like a child lost in the dark.

Suddenly he is aware of a commotion at the entrance to the tavern. Someone has shoved his way in and is shouting something frantically at the top of his lungs. Alistair can’t quite catch his words, but the lucid panic in his voice is as clear as a bell – this is not a drunkard or a mad man. Out of the corner of his eye he sees the off-duty guards leap to their feet, and the man’s words finally become comprehensible over the general din. “The Qunari have gone fucking mad! They’re attacking the city!”

Alistair takes a moment to wonder what in the name of Andraste’s flaming knickers is going on – why are there Qunari in Kirkwall, and why have they decided to go mad now? It seems extremely inconsiderate of them. But there is nothing to be done – already the common room has turned into a madhouse, and his priority is to get his people out of this Maker-forsaken city without getting embroiled in whatever ridiculous politics has led to a Qunari invasion in the middle of broad daylight. Gavin and Alyne are already at his side, and the junior Wardens are on their feet, clearly alarmed.

“Seems like a good time to take our leave,” Alistair observes in a deliberately light-hearted tone. The last thing he needs is for the junior Wardens to fall into panic.

Gavin grunts. “Not through the front.” He gestures to point out the tangle of panicked drunkards all falling over each other in their attempts to get out, jamming the narrow doorway with their bodies. Alistair thinks he can hear the sounds of screaming in the streets, of people being cut down without mercy, but he can’t let himself care. His priority is his Wardens.

“The rooms have windows big enough to climb out of.” Alyne informs them.

Alistair nods, and they quickly follow her lead. The rooms are only on the second floor and dropping down to the streets below is easy enough. Thankfully the street they find themselves on is narrow and empty for the moment. It gives him a few precious moments to cobble together some semblance of a strategy.

“We’ll have to give up on trying to track down Hawke and Tethras,” he says calmly, as if he isn’t stating the bleeding obvious. “Our priority now is to get out of Kirkwall alive. As long as we can get back to the gate we entered through, we’ll be fine. But we have to keep moving. The Qunari are Kirkwall’s problem, not ours. Am I clear?”

The junior Wardens look mostly terrified and confused. He doesn’t think they’ll be too much of a problem – they are still green and used to following his lead without question. It’s always easier to be the one following the orders than giving them. Alyne and Gavin, miracle of miracles, have identical expressions on their faces, both grim with understanding. They both know what he means. The Wardens aren’t here to offer aid to Kirkwall. Their duty is to kill darkspawn. The Qunari are alien and terrifying but they aren’t darkspawn, not by a long shot.

To that end, Alistair knows he should do his best to avoid potential skirmishes as they weave their way through the maze of streets, but he finds himself heading directly towards the sounds of people screaming for help, despite what he’s just told his Wardens. He tells himself he’s just trying to find the quickest way to the gate. If they end up having to kill any Qunari blocking their path, well, that can’t really be helped. An unfortunate coincidence – unfortunate for the Qunari, anyway.

The Qunari are roaming the city in small groups, and clearly they aren’t expecting much resistance from the city residents. They are intimidating, all rippling muscles and grey skin and twisted horns, towering above the humans like something out of a children’s story. But they are not invincible, and the Grey Wardens have faced much worse.

Alistair charges forward with a shout, and the Qunari immediately take notice, like wolves spotting a rabbit in their midst. That is their mistake. He draws their attention deliberately while Alyne rains arrows on them from a safe distance, finding her mark almost every time. Gavin’s magic tingles on Alistair’s skin, filling him with supernatural strength as he shrugs off the enemy’s blows and bashes one of them to the ground with his shield. The junior Wardens make themselves useful by finishing off the weakened enemies while Alistair turns his sword to the rest. And soon the ground is littered with dead Qunari.

They run into two more bands of Qunari and quickly dispatch them, though with some effort. At one point, Alistair makes a careless mistake and a Qunari warrior lunges for his exposed side. He turns away just in time, and the blade skims his flesh rather than skewering him right through. Alistair grits his teeth and raises his shield, slamming his enemy against the nearest wall before nearly severing his head from his shoulders with a swipe of his blade. Gavin quickly heals the wound, and they press on.

They are almost to the gate when Alistair feels the hairs on his neck rise. There’s strange magic in the air, a bitter, burnt smell that makes you flinch away. He hears a gravelly voice barking orders in a foreign but familiar tongue. A Qunari mage. He’s never seen one before, let alone faced one. He knows the wise thing to do would be to turn away and find a different path to the gate, but no one has ever accused him of being wise.

He spares a glance for his companions. Gavin seems eager to face the Qunari again, a savage grin on his face, while Alyne looks at Alistair with Orlesian disapproval, as if she knows what he’s about to do. The junior Wardens stare at him, wondering what’s coming next. They seem exhausted but unfazed, and Alistair feels a brief swell of pride. It’s heartening to know his training hasn’t been a complete failure.

They approach the sounds of battle cautiously, and Alistair signals for everyone to hold their position. Alyne knows what to do. She may not like his decision, but he must give her credit: she follows his signals without hesitation. Stepping forward silently, she presses herself close to the wall and slides herself around the corner to assess the situation.

She darts back only a few moments later, raises one finger, points at Gavin, then raises another, points at Alistair. One mage, one warrior. Alistair gestures: He and Gavin will take down the mage, the rest of them will attack the warrior.

When they turn the corner, it’s almost too easy; both the Qunari have their backs to them, facing off against another foe. Alyne’s arrows turn the Qunari warrior into a pincushion before anyone else can even react, and then the three junior Wardens leap forward to tackle the enemy before he can recover. Gavin flings a lightning bolt from his staff, but to Alistair’s dismay the energy seems to fizzle harmlessly on the Qunari mage’s skin.

And then the mage turns around, and Alistair, who has seen many indescribable monstrosities in his life, is momentarily taken aback. The mage is encased in armor that seems more like a prison than for protection, heavy pauldrons held together by multiple chains, and his face is covered in a large visor with metal bars across the eyeholes, as if it is hiding something too terrible to even look upon. It is a disturbing sight.

He is snapped back to awareness by the Qunari mage casting another spell, and he quickly lifts his shield, bracing himself for the impact and hoping that Gavin has something ready to counter the attack. But then he is startled for the second time in less than a minute: the air around them crystalizes with an icy chill, and the Qunari is briefly frozen in place.

Alistair reacts instinctively: he plunges his sword straight through the Qunari’s ribs. Blood spatters as he yanks his blade out, and the enemy falls with a clattering of metal against the cobblestones, his spell dissipating into thin air.

He takes a moment to catch his breath, realizing that either there was just a very strange turn of the weather or they have run into an apostate. He has strayed so far from his Templar roots that running into a fugitive mage seems hardly a matter for concern. But he still keeps his guard up; apostates are often desperate people, suspicious of everyone and prone to violence if they feel themselves at all cornered. He is eager to say a brief thank you and herd his Wardens as far away as possible.

There is actually a party of four facing them: a tall, red-haired woman dressed in the colors of the City Guard, a clean-shaven dwarf with a ridiculous looking crossbow, a scruffy mage that somehow looks vaguely familiar, and, standing closest to Alistair with her back to him, a woman with dark hair and a staff in her right hand. Another mage; Alistair had no idea apostates were so common in Kirkwall. She is looking at the rest of her companions, asking them if they’re all right.

“My thanks for your aid,” says Alistair formally, instinctively addressing the dark-haired woman; even with her back to him, something about the set of her shoulders tells him she is their leader.

The woman turns to face him, and all at once Alistair feels like he’s been punched squarely in the gut. She is a complete stranger, with ink-black hair falling messily around a face pale from lack of sunlight. But there is something about the curve of her slender jaw and the cat-like tilt to her midnight-blue eyes that has sucked all the air from his lungs. The scar on his heart has been torn open afresh, and for a heartbeat everything disappears except for this strange woman wearing someone else’s face.

“I suppose we should be thanking you,” she says. Her voice breaks the spell: it is surprisingly husky and not what he was expecting, though her accent is Ferelden. She takes in Alistair and his Wardens with a sharp, searching gaze. “What business do the Grey Wardens have in Kirkwall?”

“Our business is our own,’ Alyne snaps from just behind Alistair. She does have quite the way with people; getting strangers to dislike you within seconds of meeting you is no easy feat. Alistair wants to give her a Duncan look in the hopes she’ll calm down, but he is still distracted by this unknown woman with her disturbingly familiar eyes.

“What my companion means to say is, we are not at liberty to discuss Grey Warden business with outsiders,” he manages to improvise with what he hopes is a charming smile. “But we are grateful for your help. I am Alistair, and…”

“Alistair? _The_ Alistair?” the dwarf interrupts with a sudden grin. “From the Fifth Blight? The uncrowned king of Ferelden?”

Alistair laughs uncomfortably, thanking the Maker that they are far away from Denerim and Anora’s spies. “Uncrowned king is a bit of an oxymoron, isn’t it?”

“I don’t care if you are the empress of Orlais,” the woman interrupts bluntly. “Are you going to help us against the Qunari or not?”

Alistair blinks. The woman is glaring at him with eyes like a stormy sea in winter. He finds it difficult to look at her without staring, trying to figure out why she reminds him so much of his Solona despite the fact that at first glance they look almost nothing alike. “I’m afraid we are on Grey Warden business, and we are forbidden from…”

“Then Maker speed your path.” Her abrupt farewell leaves him with his mouth hanging open mid-sentence. “The way to the gate should be clear, and you can scurry away to safety without dirtying your boots.”

“We are not _scurrying away,_ we are on Grey Warden business!” Alyne hisses, almost beside herself with righteous indignation.

At the same time the guardswoman turns to the woman with reproach in her eyes. “Hawke, these are Wardens. Have some respect.”

 _Hawke?_ Alistair snaps his mouth shut and stares at the woman in disbelief. Surely a man is only allowed to be surprised so many times in a single day.

Hawke seems unimpressed by both Alyne’s anger and her own companion’s disapproval as she rolls her eyes. “The Blight is three years past, so unless there’s been some infiltration of darkspawn we’ve managed to overlook, I can’t see what Grey Warden business is more pressing than an entire city about to be enslaved by a horde of bloody Qunari.”

“You’re Hawke?” Alistair finally manages to blurt out. Curiosity makes him add, “Is that your real name?”

He knows it’s rude, but she hasn’t proven herself to be overly concerned with manners. “It’s my family name,” she says shortly, and clearly that’s all the answer he’s going to get.

“Then you’re Varric Tethras,” Gavin chimes in, addressing the dwarf. “Never seen a beardless dwarf before.”

Tethras rubs his chin. “You have enough beard for the both of us, friend.”

The other apostate in the party is unusually silent, and Alistair tears his gaze away from Hawke’s face as he tries to think why this scruffy mage also looks so naggingly familiar. Somehow he manages to dredge up a name from the depths of a murky memory. “Anders?”

The man sighs. “Damn. I was hoping to be a little less memorable. It’s the face, isn’t it? Too handsome to be easily forgotten. It’s a real burden.”

Despite everything, Alistair can’t help a grin. “You are a Warden. You were at Vigil’s Keep with the Warden-Commander. What are you doing here in Kirkwall, of all places?”

“I _was_ a Warden,” Anders corrects him. “Obviously, I’m not one anymore.”

“Being a Warden is a lifelong commitment.” Alyne is practically sputtering at this point. But Hawke cuts off the conversation by planting herself between Anders and the rest of them in a curiously protective gesture.

“Anders is no longer one of you.” Her eyes gleam with a dangerous light, almost inviting Alyne to do something stupid. Alistair wonders if she and this Anders are lovers, but the question would probably cost him his head. “And at any rate, it seems your business is with me. So what do you want? In five words or less, please. We have a city to save, and clearly your _Grey Warden business_ is even more urgent than ours, so I’m sure you don’t want to linger lest you accidentally make yourselves useful.”

Alistair wonders if Alyne is about to spontaneously combust with rage, and even he feels himself bristling at Hawke’s unconcealed contempt. But he tries to stay civil. Five words, she said.

“Tell us about red lyrium.”

Hawke’s smirk fades as she stares at him, for a moment clearly taken aback. He'd like to think she's been dazzled by his quick thinking, but somehow that doesn't seem likely.

“Stay the fuck away from it, Warden.” Her snarky demeanor is gone; she is grimly serious. She jabs a finger at him for emphasis. “Blow up all the entrances to that Void-forsaken thaig, if you know what’s good for you. “

This is not an acceptable answer to Alistair, despite the fact it’s an eerily accurate echo of his own thoughts. Clearly there is more to this story than she’s telling. But already she’s turning away, gesturing with her chin for her companions to follow her. He realizes this is all they’re going to get from her.

“Wait!” he shouts, unable to stop himself from blurting out the question. “Did you know Solona Amell?”

She stops and looks over her shoulder at him, an unreadable look on her face. “No,” is all she says, but Alistair feels with absolute certainty that she is lying, somehow. But it’s too late now, she and her companions are gone, the sounds of their footsteps fading as they race towards whatever chaos lies on the other side of the city.

“What a question!” Alyne has finally found her voice, and she is brimming with so much suppressed fury Alistair half-expects her to levitate with the force of it. “As if that _lowlife_ would have any connection with the _Hero of Ferelden_! She isn’t worthy to kiss her _feet_!” She shoots him a disapproving glare. “Surely _you_ would know that better than anyone else, Alistair.”

The image of Hawke puckering up for Solona’s toes is so incongruous that Alistair finds himself choking down a fit of inappropriate laughter. Gavin clears his throat, his face serious for once.

“Sorry to disappoint you, but I remember hearing the stories of the Amell family. They’re one of the oldest families in Hightown. There was gossip that their youngest daughter ran off with an apostate from the Circle. I’m pretty sure his name was Hawke.”

Alyne frowns, unconvinced. “It must be a coincidence.”

Her skepticism seems to amuse Gavin. “What, you think all heroes come from perfect families and pure bloodlines? You need to read more history books, woman.”

Alistair barely hears him; his mind is racing with this new bit of information, but now is not the time to indulge in distractions. “Let’s keep moving,” he suggests, and his Wardens obediently fall into line behind him as he leads them towards the gate.

***

Late that night, while his Wardens sleep, Alistair stares at the night sky and finally allows himself to feel the dull, throbbing pain of an old wound torn anew. In the immediate aftermath of Solona’s death, he’d lain awake at night and traced with his mind’s eye every single detail of her face, the face he’d known better than his own. The slight tilt of her forest-green eyes and the permanently questioning arch of her eyebrows. The way the sun brought out the glints of copper in the warm brown ripples of her hair. Her smile blossoming slowly across her face, like a shy bud unfurling in the sunlight. The curve of her slender chin that could turn surprisingly stubborn when the mood took her. He would trace those features over and over again into his heart until the lines were raw and bleeding. He’d almost relished the agony it brought him. It was the least he deserved for failing the only woman he’d ever loved.

Eventually it had come to the point where either he was going to spend his entire life paralyzed with masochistic grief or make the decision to let himself heal and move on with his life. The former choice had been a tempting one. In his darker moments he had even fantasized about being reunited with Solona somewhere beyond the Veil, finally free from a world that had given them nothing but suffering. But he’d known all too well that his life has never been his own. Duty runs in his blood, it is engraved into his bones, and even his love and his longing for Solona cannot alter that. So Alistair has done his best to forget Solona’s face, or at least to dim the memories of her lovely eyes and heartbreaking smile so that he can get through the day without feeling the gravity of his grief weighing down his every step, heavier than a millstone around his neck.

Against his better judgement, he thinks back to his encounter with Hawke. He finds himself shaking his head as he recalls her thinly-veiled hostility and barely civil conversation – her demeanor reminds him more of a certain sharp-tongued Witch of the Wilds than it does his gentle, soft-spoken Solona.

But still, Hawke’s face. He returns to it again and again, reluctant but unable to resist, like a moth being drawn to the flame that will be its destruction. It has awoken in him a hunger for a face he’s done his utmost to forget but is still powerless to deny.

Alistair closes his eyes, wishing he’d never set foot in Kirkwall. When he sleeps, he dreams of a faceless Solona with eyes the color of a winter sea.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to user Shepard_Shakedown for helping me revise this chapter!


	2. Though I Bear Scars Beyond Counting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke (four years later): Home is where you're free to fall to pieces.

Hawke stands in the midst of the wasteland and feels nothing. Her heart is a charred crater in the middle of her chest, blackened and twisted, as barren as the ground she stands on. More than half a decade has passed since the Blight was defeated, but for this place it might as well have been yesterday. The taint of the darkspawn hordes has sunk deep, and the earth is little more than rocks and dust. Finally, she is home.

She finds herself walking through what was once the main thoroughfare. The shadows cast by the light of the full moon soften the harsh edges of the landscape, bathing the ruins in an illusory glow that turns the scenery from stark and desolate to something otherworldly, almost beautiful. Some of the buildings are little more than burnt shells; others are almost perfectly intact. A few of the houses even have signs of repair, attempted and abandoned soon after the Blight ended. Idle curiosity prompts Hawke to stop by the former tavern, which from the outside looks almost untouched. She reaches under the dusty counter and finds, miracle of miracles, a bottle of unopened whiskey. Without hesitation she uncorks it and takes a deep drink. It burns going down and the fumes make her eyes water, but the warmth in her belly is the least unpleasant sensation she’s experienced in quite a while. Bottle in hand, she continues her aimless wander.

She’s not even quite sure why she’s here. Once her feet carried her out of the Gallows, she’s hardly stopped walking. She has only the vaguest of ideas what day it is. Time has become a comforting blur. She spends her days sleeping wherever is convenient – under bushes, in abandoned huts, sometimes the occasional cave. She spends her nights walking, keeping off the main roads, surviving on whatever the land and the occasional village or farmhouse has to offer. Her clothes hang much more loosely on her than they did before, and she’s had to tighten her belt several notches, but these observations don’t particularly interest her. She walks and walks and walks in an attempt to leave Kirkwall as far behind her as she possibly can, but her traitorous feet have brought her to the one place in Thedas that holds almost as much pain for her as Kirkwall does.

Lothering.

The place is full of ghosts. Here is the clearing in front of the Chantry where the village children chased each other until the Reverend Mother came out to chide them for their lack of decorum. Here is the old willow tree where boys and girls would carve the names of their secret infatuations into the bark in the hopes their daydreams of stolen kisses would come true. Here is the abandoned shed where Hawke caught the twins sneaking their first bottle of spirits. Carver had vomited it all back up again while Bethany had almost set fire to the village in a fit of giddy excitement. And now both are dead and buried: Carter somewhere in a forgotten, shallow grave between here and Kirkwall, Bethany in a dark corner of the Deep Roads with nothing but demons and darkspawn for company.

She reaches the house and pauses at the gate. The fence has rotted away to little more than a row of broken, rotted teeth. The apple tree that had been her father’s pride is withered and spotted with disease. But the four walls and shingled roof are still there, still holding on to the illusion that there is something inside worth sheltering. Hawke walks up to the front door and instinctively reaches to push it open, as if she’s just been out for a quick errand and is coming home just in time for dinner.

At the last minute she snatches her hand back, as if the door is the gaping maw of a beast ready to devour her alive. She somehow knows that if she goes in, she will no longer be able to maintain the icy emptiness inside of her, the last vestige of sanity that she is holding onto by a fraying thread. The waves of emotions crashing around her heart will overwhelm her and she will drown.

She recklessly finishes the bottle of whiskey before tossing it over the fence, relishing the burning nausea in her belly as a welcome distraction from her thoughts. Then she carefully puts down her satchel and sits in the dirt, leaning against the doorframe. Exhaustion weighs heavily on her eyelids and drags her down into blessed oblivion.

***

The shadow of an unfamiliar presence jolts her out of her sleep. Instinctively she reaches for her mana and blindly expels it in a scattershot blast as she stumbles upright. A flash of pain behind her eyes – Maker’s balls, that whiskey was the worst idea she’s had in some time. She staggers back against the wall of the house, doubled over, vaguely aware that someone is shouting in her direction.

And then she feels a vacuum, an abrupt lack of magic that she knows can only mean one thing. Have the Templars found her? She claws desperately against the emptiness, panic gripping her throat. She will set herself on fire and take every last one of them with her to the Void before she will let them touch her.

“Maker’s breath, are you even listening?”

Hawke looks up to see a man in Grey Warden armor standing a few spans away, his shield raised towards her in a defensive posture but his sword still sheathed. She slowly straightens and takes a moment to draw in a shaky breath. Her mana is returning, but she knows she hadn’t imagined that moment of absence, when she’d reached for her power and found nothing there. “What did you do to me?” she hisses.

He cautiously lowers his shield, eyeing her warily. “It’s temporary. And just so we’re clear, you started it. My only crime was saying _good morning_. Where I come from, that’s usually not an invitation to start a fight.”

Hawke ignores this absurd man for the moment as she breathes in, breathes out, her earlier panic slowly subsiding as her magic fills her once more. She takes the opportunity to study him through squinted eyes – her head is still pounding so hard she can barely think. He is tall and broad-shouldered, and everything about him, from his close-cropped haircut to his square, stubbly jawline, makes him look like a hero sprung to life from the cover of one of Varric’s ridiculous serials. But something about the shade of his tawny hair reminds her of Anders. Anders, with his unkempt locks that she’d never tired of tucking back behind his ears as they lay together in bed, legs entwined under the tangled sheets.

The memory takes her unawares, and she almost gasps with the force of it, the tears welling up in her eyes without warning. She quickly turns away, struggling to regain the comforting numbness she has managed to wrap herself in since she left Kirkwall. The thought of weeping in front of this complete stranger is obscene. She’d almost rather strip herself naked and flash him her tits.

“Who the fuck are you?” she rasps, still not trusting herself to look at him.

“My name is Alistair. I’m a Grey Warden.” He speaks in a low, careful voice, as if he’s trying to calm a skittish animal. “I don’t know if you remember me, but we’ve met. Briefly. A few years ago, when the Grey Wardens were passing through Kirkwall in the middle of a Qunari attack. I asked you about red lyrium, and you very helpfully told us to stay away from it.”

Hawke is surprised that she does remember. It’s been four years, and that chance encounter with the Wardens has been buried under all the other shit that happened that day, but the memory swims to her surface of her hazy consciousness, though she winces with the effort to recall the details. “I told you to stay the _fuck_ away from it.”

“Well, I was always taught to watch my language in the presence of a lady.” The unexpected quip makes Hawke huff in reluctant amusement. He drops his shield arm, now, and unhooks a flask from his belt, offering it to her at arm’s length as if he’s worried she’ll bite his hand off.

She takes it from him and drinks greedily, feeling the water flow into her in a dizzying rush of relief. Then she hands the bottle back to the Warden and wipes her mouth carelessly on her sleeve. Her headache has gone from murderous to just about bearable.

“What in the name of the Maker are you doing in Lothering?” She flings out a hand to gesture at the wasteland around them. “Don’t tell me you’re here for the rustic scenery.”

He snorts. “I admit, time hasn’t improved the place.”

It is an unexpected answer. “Have you been here before?”

“Once.” The smile is gone, and his eyes close briefly. “Just before the Blight reached the village. We were passing through on our way to Redcliffe.”

Ah. Another memory floats to the surface. “Right. You’re _the_ Alistair. How could I have forgotten? The king’s bastard, the one who traveled with the bloody Hero of Ferelden and stopped the Blight.”

“Guilty as charged.” She feels his gaze focus on her face, as if he’s looking for some sort of hidden clue to a puzzle in her features. With his cleanshaven face and warm hazel eyes, he looks rather out of place in this bleak wasteland, as if he’s a character that’s wandered into the wrong story. She’s abruptly aware of the grime and sweat of the past few weeks, how her eyes must be haggard and bloodshot from the bottle of whiskey she so foolishly finished last night. A slightly hysterical giggle escapes her at this thought. Here they are, leagues from civilization in the middle of Blight-ravaged lands, and she’s worried what this stranger might think of how she’s let herself go. Bethany, at least, would have appreciated her concerns.

He furrows his brow, clearly confused as to what she finds so amusing. “Last time we met, I asked if you knew Solona Amell.”

So he had. She’d forgotten that detail. “And I told you that I don’t,” she retorts. Questions about Solona have always rubbed her the wrong way. And she isn’t lying; she’s never met the woman. But he is looking at her with a desperate sort of hunger that somehow manages to scratch at her carefully constructed indifference, and she finds herself relenting.

“Our mothers were cousins. That’s all. I’ve only ever heard about Solona. You know more about her than I do. Maker’s balls, the two of you traveled the length of Ferelden to stop the Blight. Why are you asking _me_ about her?”

Alistair exhales, as if he’s been holding a long breath. “You… look a little like her.”

The answer surprises her into a brief silence. He looks away, his features suddenly tensing as if in pain. Morning sunlight flashes through a break in the clouds and bathes him in a warm glow, illuminating his chiseled profile in a way that really would be worthy of a serial cover illustration. Hawke bites down another inappropriate bubble of laughter at this thought and wonders why the memory of Solona causes this man so much angst. It isn’t the normal grief over a lost love. There is something deeper there, a bitterness that makes a scar impossible to heal cleanly. Hawke should know; her soul is covered with such scars, the latest one still a raw, bleeding wound that has almost rent her heart in two.

“Don’t tell me you’ve come all the way to this shithole for a nostalgic wallow.” Hawke is deliberately callous in her retort; she just wants this stranger to fuck off so she can wrap herself in her own misery and conveniently forget about everything and everyone else. For once in her life she doesn’t want to have to think about other people. Is that really too much to ask? Hasn’t she done enough, bled enough, sacrificed enough? And when has it ever brought her anything but grief?

Alistair turns back to her, the expression on his face making her feel like she’s just kicked a defenseless puppy. “I’ve come looking for you, Hawke. Any nostalgic wallowing I get to do as a result is purely a welcome coincidence.”

He is mildly amusing, she’ll grant him that much. But the fact that he’s somehow managed to track her down is of far more interest to her than his sense of humor.

“How in the name of Andraste’s blessed tits did you know I was here?”

“I went to Kirkwall first. The city was… in some chaos, but I managed to track down your friend in the City Guard. She told me what happened. With the Chantry, and… everything else.”

He is looking at her somberly. She braces herself, expecting to see condemnation in his eyes, but instead they are full of something closer to commiseration. “I am sorry, Hawke. Though Maker knows how little that’s worth.”

Hawke laughs bitterly. “Sorry? For which part? The part where the love of my life blew up the Chantry and murdered the Reverend Mother in cold blood? Or the part where I had to stand there like a fucking mute and watch Meredith hack his head off to put an end to what he’d become?”

Her voice breaks on those last words; this is the first time she’s acknowledged, out loud, the harsh reality that has driven her from Kirkwall, all the way back to where she’d started. Had Anders _deserved_ to die? A life for a life – and Anders had taken more than just one life. He’d blown up the Chantry knowing full well his actions would result in the death of numerous innocents. In the end, he’d _allowed_ the Templars to bind him and push him to his knees as Meredith demanded he pay for his crimes right then and there. _This is the only way to end it, Hawke. You should have done this yourself a long time ago._ He could have shoved a dagger straight through her heart and she was certain it would have been less painful than hearing him say those words. Justice had been devouring his soul all these years, right before her eyes, and she’d done nothing. Her whole life in Kirkwall had always been a shower of shit, and what she had shared with Anders had been her only haven, a precious oasis in the sea of inevitable chaos. So she’d willfully turned a blind eye to the fact that Anders’s growing anger and bitterness was warping Justice into something darker, more ruthless. She’d been so desperate to preserve the one good thing that had happened to her since she’d left Lothering, at all costs. And it had ended in blood. For her, everything always ended in blood.

In the end, she’d let Meredith have her way. Not only because she’d been unable to deny the enormity of his crime, but also because she’d foolishly thought the Knight-Commander would be appeased with this one death. Surely beheading the man responsible, for the crime, an apostate and an abomination to boot, would quench the Knight-Commander’s lust for vengeance. Little had any of them known the extent of her madness. So Hawke had stood back and allowed the execution of the man she loved, and it had turned out to be for nothing after all. All those Templars who’d spent the past decade terrorizing innocent mages with impunity are back in Kirkwall still drawing breath, Void take their damned souls, and Anders, who’d dedicated his life to helping the downtrodden and persecuted, was dead and gone.

He’d looked her in the eye with a tremulous smile before the Templars forced him to bow his head, baring his neck in anticipation of Meredith’s cruel blade. If the bastard Maker has any shred of mercy within his withered heart, he will one day take these memories from her, of how the blood of the man she’d loved spurted in a fountain of red and ran into a pool at her feet, and how his head rolled along the cobblestones of the Gallows courtyard, staring emptily at nothing.

“I know what it’s like to blame yourself for the death of someone you love.”

Alistair speaks quietly, breaking into her bleak thoughts. The raw grief in his words convinces Hawke of his sincerity. But she doesn’t want his compassion. She is holding herself together by sheer force of will, and compassion will be her undoing. She will fall apart into countless fragments and never be able to put herself back together again.

“Your friend said that the Knight-Commander had a sword made of pure red lyrium.” Alistair’s voice sounds to her as if he’s speaking from a great distance. With an effort she pulls her mind back to the present.

“She did.” Hawke shakes her head with a grimace at the memory of Meredith’s demise. She had always despised the woman, but her end had been… rather horrific. Though no more than the bitch deserved. “Did Aveline also tell you how she used the sword to bring entire statues to life? Or how the red lyrium turned _her_ into a statue in the end?”

“Yes.” A ghost of a smile flickers across Alistair’s face, though his eyes remain grave. “It seems she didn’t take your advice to stay the fuck away from it.”

Hawke snorts. “Meredith never took advice from anyone. If she had, neither of us would be standing here at the moment, and the Grand Cleric would still be alive.” She narrows her eyes at the Warden, realizing the conversation has wandered off track.

“So you had a natter with Aveline in Kirkwall. That still doesn’t explain how you knew I was in Lothering.”

He shrugs. “That part was a lucky guess. From what the Guard Captain told me the fact that Lothering was your childhood home is fairly common knowledge, but the Templars decided no _sensible_ person would return to a village wiped out by the Blight, even for the most nostalgic of wallows. Their search is focused on the Free Marches and the ships headed north.” The corner of his mouth twitches. “Clearly they don’t know you very well.”

Hawke surprises herself with a snort of amusement. “I admit, _sensible_ is not the first word people usually use to describe me.”

She leans back against the rotting doorframe of the house and crosses her arms. Now that she’s had some time to gather her wits, she has a better idea of why Alistair has gone to the effort of tracking her halfway across Thedas, but she is in no mood to make it easier for him.

“So, then. What do the Grey Wardens want from a clearly unhinged apostate fugitive?”

Alistair takes a moment to swing his shield onto his back before answering. When he turns to look at her again, he is no longer smiling.

“What do you know about Corypheus?”

Ah, yes, there it is. Hawke shrugs, deliberately feigning ignorance. “What makes you think I know anything about him?”

“Reliable witnesses place you and your companions near the Vinmark Mountains less than a year ago. And now the prison is open, and Corypheus is gone. Don’t insult me by telling me you just happened to be visiting friends in the area.”

Hawke bares her teeth in what she intends to be a blatantly unfriendly grin. “If by visiting friends you mean killed a big bad darkspawn, then yes, that’s what I was doing.”

His eyes are narrowed in what is clearly skepticism. “What happened to Janeka and her Wardens? The ones who were guarding Corypheus’s prison?”

“You mean, the crazy bitch who was planning on freeing an ancient darkspawn and controlling it using blood magic?” Hawke snaps, irritated. “That Janeka?”

Alistair stares at her, uncomprehending. “Janeka tried to _free_ Corypheus?”

“Is there some sort of mandate that requires you Wardens to give up all your common sense before taking your vows?” Hawke inquires with an exaggerated furrow of her brow. “You capture a darkspawn with the power to toy with your minds, and your solution is to put him in a prison guarded by yourselves. Fucking brilliant. Who could have predicted _that_ was going to end badly?”

Alistair’s stare turns into open shock. “How… how do you know about his ability to manipulate the Grey Wardens?”

Hawke rolls her eyes impatiently. “Oh, you mean your _deep dark secret_ about how you drink darkspawn blood to shield yourself from the taint?”

He looks completely taken aback, as if she’s discovered his secret journal where he writes down his fantasies of dressing up as a Chantry sister. She can’t help laughing at his expression.

“Larius told us everything. About the blood, about your Calling, and how all of that made all of you vulnerable to Corypheus. And yes, Janeka tried to free Corypheus.” Hawke laughs humorlessly. “She had some Fade-touched idea that she’d be able to control him, use his magic to end all the Blights forever. She _also_ tried to have me assassinated, by the way. And I’m still waiting for an apology letter from you Wardens. Doesn’t anyone send flowers anymore?”

“She… what?” Alistair’s expression makes it painfully obvious that he is strolling to keep up. “And… Larius? Are you talking about _Warden Commander_ Larius? But he should be long dead!”

Hawke lets out a long breath of frustration and shuts her eyes for a moment against the dull throbbing of her headache. “All right. Keep your mouth shut and save your questions for the end, Warden. I’m only going to tell this story once.”

She is no Varric, with his flair for spinning a good story. Her only concern is conveying to Alistair the most important facts: how she and her companions had gone to the Vinmark Mountains to find out why the Carta was sending assassins after her, and how they’d discovered Corypheus’s prison and Janeka’s insane plan: use Hawke’s blood to free the ancient darkspawn and somehow bend the monster to her will. How they had also met Larius, the old Warden-Commander who’d originally coerced Hawke’s father into creating the prison seals using forbidden blood magic, when Hawke had still been in her mother’s womb. In the subsequent years, the taint had clearly driven Larius mad. When Hawke and her party had encountered him, the man had been barely coherent. He’d just about managed to guide them through the prison and lead them to Corypheus. But the death of Corypheus had restored much of his sanity, and when they’d parted ways, he’d told Hawke he meant to return to the Wardens to tell them what had happened.

“Larius left to follow his Calling years ago.” Alistair’s features are tight with dismay. “We had no idea he was even still alive. He hasn’t made contact with anyone. The only reason we found out about Corypheus is because Janeka stopped sending reports. After the second missing report, a group was sent to the prison to investigate. That’s when we discovered the bodies. And an empty prison.”

“Well, now you know.” Hawke retorts. “And you’re welcome, by the way.”

He doesn’t look appropriately grateful. In fact, he is eyeing her with what looks suspiciously close to disapproval. “If what you say is true, why didn’t Larius return to us after it was all over, like he said he would?”

“You’ll have to ask him, I’m afraid. Perhaps he found something more pleasant to distract him on his way there. Most Grey Wardens I’ve met seem to live with a perpetual stick up their ass. I don’t blame him for not wanting to go back.”

A frown creases his features, but to her disappointment he doesn’t rise to her bait. “Are you _certain_ Corypheus is dead?”

The gall of him to question her competence after the complete fucking mess his people made of everything. “Can anyone _truly_ be certain of _anything_ in these uncertain times we live in?” she asks with a theatrical sigh. “I admit, I am no Grey Warden, and all I know about darkspawn is how to set them on fire or turn them into icicles. In my limited experience that usually results in death. But you are the expert, so I will defer to your wisdom, Warden.”

Her pointed sarcasm just makes him frown even harder. “He isn’t just some random darkspawn, you know. He’s one of the oldest. Darkspawn don’t exactly become nicer with age.”

“Are you _lecturing me_ on what Corypheus was?” Hawke laughs at him with deliberate scorn. “ _I’ll_ tell you what he was. He was a magister of the ancient Tevinter Imperium. One of the fucking Magisters Sidereal, the priests of Dumat. Those bastards who entered the Golden City and turned it black.” She points at him for emphasis. “Do you know what that means? He wasn’t one of the oldest darkspawn. He was one of the _first._ ”

The look on his face is priceless. “That’s… impossible.”

She shrugs. “Believe what you like. But it doesn’t matter anymore, does it? Because he’s _dead._ ”

Alistair doesn’t look convinced; if anything, he looks even angrier than before. “If that’s true, then it’s even more likely you didn’t really kill him after all. He could be like an Archdemon and have the power to send his soul into other darkspawn. And you want me to believe that _you_ managed to kill a darkspawn when countless other Wardens failed?”

“The Wardens failed _because_ you’re Wardens, you halfwit.” Hawke snaps, unable to hold her temper any longer. “You knew Corypheus had the power to play you all like puppets on strings.” The memory of Anders losing control as they drew nearer to Corypheus, his eyes glowing blue with Justice’s ever-present anger, is just more salt in her open wound. “And so your brilliant idea was to lock him in a prison and guard him yourselves. And when that didn’t work, you decided to threaten a woman with child so her husband had no choice but to become a maleficar!” She catches his slight flinch with grim satisfaction. “And now that someone has _finally_ taken care of the problem for good, you decide that the best thing to do is to stamp your feet and pout like a spoiled child. Well done, Warden.” She punctuates her words with slow, exaggerated applause. “You’ve really covered yourselves in glory.”

Alistair has paled at her initial accusations, but by the end of her tirade the lines of his face are as hard as stone. His affable demeanor is gone, and his words are clipped and precise.

“If you’re so clever, did it never occur to you that _Larius_ himself could have been part of a trap laid by Corypheus? He’s evil, not stupid. And it wasn’t the cleverest thing to think you could simply free him and kill him and just go home for supper. What if things had gone wrong? You would have unleashed a monster and we all would have been caught with our pants down. That blood would have been on _your_ hands.”

Hawke is momentarily speechless. She’d almost lost her life battling a creature that was older than Andraste herself, a creature that the Wardens themselves had been powerless to defeat, and all it has earned her is a berating that she hadn’t been _careful_ enough. By a man she barely knows, in a manner that would be more befitting a king sitting on his throne than a bastard Warden in the arse end of nowhere.

Worse, his words have planted a small seed of doubt in her heart – is it possible that Larius somehow tricked her into freeing Corypheus after all? Has her arrogance blinded her so badly?

She swiftly rejects that thought. If there is one thing Hawke is confident about, it is her ability to kill. There is no possible way Corypheus could have survived – she turned him into solid ice, watched the ice shatter into countless fragments. And there were no darkspawn left in the prison when she’d killed him. Even if he’d had the powers of an Archdemon – and that was a big _if_ , nothing but conjecture on Alistair’s part – he wouldn’t have had the chance to use them.

“In case you’ve forgotten, serah, I’m not a bloody Grey Warden.” She draws herself up and meets him glare for glare, wanting him to know that she is not intimidated by his condemnation. “I owe you nothing. There was a threat and I dealt with it. And if you don’t approve of the way I handled it, you can take your objections and shove them up your ass or toss them in the Void, whichever is more convenient.”

She follows her suggestion with a rude gesture for emphasis, and Alistair blinks, as scandalized as a virgin Chantry sister. Hawke would laugh if she weren’t still furious.

“As for Larius, if he’d really been part of some nefarious plot to free Corypheus, don’t you think we’d have heard from them by now? That battle was almost a year ago. Do you think they’ve run off together to drink fine wine in Antiva?”

The disapproval on his face is still there, but she catches a sudden glint of wry humor in his hazel eyes. “Centuries in a magical prison probably does make one thirsty.”

One minute the man is censuring her with all the self-righteous authority of a bloody king, then next he’s jesting about the possibility that the most powerful darkspawn outside of an actual Archdemon is on the loose in Thedas. He is certainly an interesting character, this Grey Warden named Alistair, but Hawke doesn’t have the energy to continue this conversation any further. The anger has drained out of her, leaving her feeling empty and sullen. She doesn’t care if Corypheus is planning to marry the Orlesian empress and declare himself the second coming of Andraste. She just wants to find a quiet corner so she can curl up and torture herself with thoughts of what has been and what might have been. She has walked half the breadth of Thedas with barely any rest, terrified of giving herself permission to take a breath lest she never be able to rise again. The weariness of the past few months suddenly makes itself felt, all the way down to the marrow in her bones. She closes her eyes, willing herself to stay upright for just a few more moments. She will not reveal any weakness to this almost complete stranger.

“I’m sorry you’ve come all this way, but I have nothing more to say to you.” She looks away. This conversation is over as far as she’s concerned. “Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be left alone so I can nostalgically wallow in peace.”

She feels his eyes on her, but thankfully he doesn’t press the issue. “Thank you for answering my questions,” he says to her, his words stiff and formal despite her blatant rudeness. “Maker watch over you, Hawke.

Hawke feels his eyes lingering on her before he turns away, but she is determined not to look at him. She is suddenly afraid of what she might see in his face. Disappointment? Pity? She is not sure which would be more difficult to endure.

Once he is safely on his way, she does watch him leave. He winds his way around the ruined buildings and through the barren fields, gradually becoming a blue and silver speck that disappears into the sprawling forest beyond. Then she turns around to face the door of the empty shell that was once her home. With a small sigh, she pushes it open and crosses the threshold, letting it swing closed behind her, leaving her alone in the darkness with her scars and her grief.


	3. The Song of Multitudes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alistair (two years later): How do you battle an enemy that dwells within?

Supper at Vigil’s Keep is usually nothing exciting, with Wardens trickling in and out at odd times depending on their different duties that day, but tonight a hum of excitement is in the air. Stroud and his party have returned after a month of being on the road. The senior Warden has disappeared into the Warden-Commander’s study the moment he returned, but the three junior Wardens he’d been traveling are sitting in the dining hall and enthusiastically stuffing their faces with fresh bread and hot stew. They are the center of attention as the other Wardens crowd around them, hungry for gossip of the outside world.

Alistair is sitting at the next table, still sweaty and disheveled from his training sessions this afternoon, half-listening to the chatter while wolfing down his supper. Much of it is about the current Mage-Templar War that is raging across half of Thedas and the Conclave that is soon to be held at the Temple of Sacred Ashes – the Divine’s desperate attempt to bring an end to the chaos that has already claimed so many lives. The Wardens, of course, are pledged to stay out of such political conflicts, though Alistair is aware the current Warden-Commander has made it known that any mage or Templar wishing to escape the war will be welcomed into the Warden ranks with no questions asked. It is a plan he mostly approves of, though the thought of the Keep being swarmed with apostates and their former jailors fills him with not a little apprehension.

"Alistair.” One of Stroud’s Wardens is standing next to him, a slight young man with pale hair and freckles across his sunburnt face. “I have a letter for you.”

Alistair looks up from chewing and hastily swallows what’s in his mouth, wiping his face with his napkin. “A letter? From whom?”

The other Warden shrugs. “It’s sealed, and the messenger didn’t say much. Just said it was meant for you.”

“Thank you.” Alistair takes the envelope. The other Warden doesn’t linger, but quickly goes back to the main table to rejoin the excitement there.

Alistair smiles to himself with rueful amusement – at some point he has gone from being a tragic hero of the Fifth Blight to just another old has-been that no one finds particularly interesting. Alone at his table, he turns the letter over to study the seal. The wax is dark purple, imprinted with the shape of a small bird in flight. It’s not one he recognizes.

He quickly breaks it open and scans the bottom of the letter first, but it is only signed with a single initial. The handwriting is light and delicate, the letters slanting across the paper in graceful curves. The paper smells faintly of some flower that immediately reminds him of his childhood at Redcliffe, running around the grass clearing around the old windmill in his bare feet.

_My dearest friend,_

_I’ve thought often about writing you, but the words I put to paper always seemed foolish and inadequate. And so ten years have come and gone in the blink of an eye. Forgive me for my silence. The pain of losing S was too fresh in my heart, though Maker knows my grief would have been a drop in the ocean compared to your own. Even now, I find myself thinking about her almost every day, particularly in light of recent events. I can’t help but question the Maker’s will when I think of how her wisdom and bravery might have been a guiding light for us in these troubling times. But time has been kind to my grief, and while it still saddens me to think of her, my memories no longer cause me the same kind of pain they once did. I can only hope the same has been true for you._

_Unfortunately, the reason for this letter is more cause for sorrow. W is dead. She has become a victim of the war that rages around us, and while the circumstances of her death are not completely clear to me, I know for certain that she died as she lived: with grace and with courage, true to the principles she lived by. We spoke briefly on several occasions before she passed, and she often worried about how you might harbor ill will towards her because the doubts she’d expressed concerning your relationship with S. After S’s death, I know she felt guilty about having voiced such doubts, as if they had somehow invited fate to prove her forebodings true. Know that she mourned S’s death as much as the rest of us, and her reluctance to reach out to you was only born of her desire to cause you no more pain._

_I confess, I often find myself thinking back on our time during the Blight with fondness, though perhaps it borders on blasphemy to say so. It makes me smile to remember our evenings around the campfire and how you used to pester me like a child for sordid details about my past life as a traveling bard. I hope you are reading this letter next to a warm fireplace, and that the silly tales I told all those years ago still hold a place in your heart. These are dark days, and any source of light is a welcome one._

_Maker watch over you and keep you safe. L._

Alistair sets the letter down and looks around him, vaguely surprised to remember that he is sitting in the dining hall in Vigil’s Keep. Here he was, eating his dinner and minding his own business, then this letter appears and turns everything upside down. If the other Warden had tossed an acid grenade into his lap it would have been less of a shock. (Though probably a lot more painful.)

Leliana. She is inextricably connected to his memories of Solona and therefore he has often found himself trying to avoid thinking about her at all, but the letter has brought her back to him so vividly that he feels almost shaken, as if he’s met a ghost. He remembers their first encounter in Lothering, a pretty redheaded Chantry sister with a deadly aim and the most enchanting voice. And also prone to hearing voices, let’s not forget. He wonders if she still thinks the Maker speaks to her or if life has disillusioned her in that regard.

He’s not sure how to feel about the news of Wynne’s death. There is a distant sadness in his chest, as if the grief is borrowed from someone else. It does pain him to think that Wynne stopped herself from contacting him because she thought there was some lingering resentment on his part. He’d never blamed anyone for Solona’s death other than himself. But Leliana isn’t wrong; time has somewhat blunted the edges of his grief, and now he can think of Solona and their time together without the pain crushing the very breath from his lungs. Still her letter has ironically lent a sharp vividness to memories that had otherwise faded, and he shuts his eyes against the image of a lifeless Solona sprawled on the grey stones, her deep green eyes staring blankly at nothing.

He gives a sharp shake of his head to bring him back to the present. In his head he starts composing a reply to the redheaded bard: _Dear Leliana, thank you most kindly for bringing my worst nightmares back to life. I’ve become far too used to having a good night’s sleep these days._ But he knows that is unfair; Leliana had loved Solona dearly, and so had Wynne. He makes a mental note to stop by the chapel tomorrow and say a prayer to the Maker for her soul. She deserves peace, wherever she is now.

He reads Leliana’s letter once more, slowly this time, and something odd strikes him about the last few lines. Leliana’s tales of her past had certainly been exciting, but they had never been silly. That was the first he’d learned of how Orlesian bards were actually trained to be spies and assassins. Leliana had been one of the best. She’d never been particularly forthcoming about the details of their past, but eventually she’d shared a few details here and there, and when she’d been in a good mood she’d entertained them with proper tales of intrigue, plotting, and backstabbing.

On a sudden hunch, he gets up from the table, leaving his dinner half-eaten, and quickly makes his way back to his room. As a senior Warden he has the luxury of private quarters, though it is a small space with little more than a bed, a desk, and a trunk for his belongings. He takes care to close the door behind him, then sits at his desk and lights his lamp with a match. Then he unfolds the letter and carefully holds it close to the flame.

_I hope you are reading this letter next to a warm fireplace … Any source of light is a welcome one._

He holds his breath as the heat from the candle starts to reveal more words written on the other side of the paper, causing him to grin to himself in satisfaction and a little bit of amusement – he wonders if Leliana worried that he’d be too thick to read between the lines when she penned the original message. The writing is very faint, and he is reluctant to hold the paper any closer to the candle lest it burn. Patiently he waits until it seems all the hidden writing is finally revealed. Then he spreads the paper flat on his desk and starts to read.

_They say that Templars aren’t chosen for their intelligence, but I’ve always known there was a reason you left them early on. The Wardens in Orlais have all left their holdings and disappeared. No one knows where they’ve gone, though there are rumors of them heading west. Are they running from something? Or towards something? There are no hints either way. It is hard not to be concerned, especially in times like these. I am reluctant to make a formal inquiry to Weisshaupt, though I have no concrete reason to be suspicious. All I know is you are the only Warden I can trust. Know that I now stand in the divinest of darkness, and trust that my intentions are only good._

Alistair stares at the letter as if it has suddenly turned into a snake. Leliana might think that Templars are mostly thugs in shiny armor who read nothing outside of the Chant of Light, but it is only due to his Templar roots that he understands that last sentence. Leliana, the crazy former bard from Orlais prone to delusions and hallucinations, is now the Left Hand of the Divine. And she has written to him to tell him that Wardens are disappearing, with the strong implication that they are involved in something…. bad. Why else would all of them suddenly vanish with no warning? Unless they are all planning a surprise birthday party for the First Warden. (Although that would require knowing when the First Warden’s birthday actually is. Alistair is not even sure whether the First Warden is a man or a woman. Or even human, for that matter. Does the First Warden even have a birthday? Or did they spring fully formed from the foundations of Weisshaupt itself?)

Alistair shakes his head to clear it of his inane musings and refocuses on the letter. This is all very exciting, but where does this leave him? Wardens disappearing in the middle of the night is clearly a cause for concern, but what will he tell the Warden-Commander when he asks for leave to travel to Orlais? Should he tell her the truth? But Leliana has clearly hinted at corruption within the Warden ranks, and life has taught him the hard way that betrayal is often unpredictable. Traitors rarely walk around rubbing their hands together while cackling to themselves about their evil plots. Leonie has done nothing to merit suspicion, but neither had Loghain, until he’d left them all to be slaughtered by the darkspawn horde.

Should he just steal away in the middle of the night? Then _he_ would be the traitor, or at the very least a deserter. What if this all proves to be nothing more than a misunderstanding? He doesn’t fancy his chances trying to explain to Leonie why he thought it was a good idea to spy amongst his own people on the word of a woman he hasn’t seen nor spoken to in ten years.

The knock on the door makes him jump almost a foot in the air. He hastily shoves the letter into his pocket and blows out the candle before opening his door.

It is Stroud. The Orlesian Warden is still wearing his armor, the dust of the road on his cloak, though his luxurious mustache is as magnificent as ever. Alistair suddenly remembers the younger Wardens taking bets on whether Stroud takes the time every morning to comb through it with pomade and arrange it to his liking, and the thought almost makes him snort in the Warden’s face. He turns it into a choked cough.

“Stroud. What can I do for you?”

“The Warden-Commander requires your presence.” For an Orlesian, Stroud is a man of few words, and the mustache makes his face hard to read. Alistair’s fingers twitch, and he has to make an effort not to touch the pocket holding Leliana’s letter. Instead he crosses his arms.

“I just need a moment to wash up,” he starts to say in an attempt to buy himself some time, but Stroud cuts him off.

"Now.” And with that, he strides off, leaving Alistair no choice but to scramble after him, dark foreboding twisting his gut.

***

When Alistair enters the room, Warden-Commander Leonie Caron is standing in front of a map of Thedas pinned to the wall behind her desk. She has been the Warden-Commander of Amaranthine ever since the end of the Fifth Blight, when the land was taken from Howe and granted to the Wardens by Anora – pardon, Her Majesty _Queen_ Anora. At the time there had been murmurings that the role of Warden Commander should have been granted to Alistair, but Weisshaupt had quickly shut that idea down. Not that Alistair had ever wanted to be Warden Commander, but even if he had, he knew enough about politics to know it would have been a bad idea. Granting Anora’s gift to the man who was the biggest rival for her throne would have been a slap in the face. Not the kind of diplomatic disaster the Wardens needed.

So Weisshaupt had eventually sent Leonie Caron to take up the post. She is Orlesian, like Stroud, but nothing about her fits the stereotype of Orlesian women that Alistair is familiar with. Not that she tries to pretend she is anything but their Commander – there has never been any attempt on her part to be friends with those that serve under her. But she treats her people fairly, and they see her on the field training just as often as she is behind a desk. Alistair has nothing but respect for her.

Today, like most days, she is dressed simply, in a navy doublet and grey trousers, unarmed and unadorned. Her black hair is streaked with grey and gathered into a sensible knot. She turns to greet them, gesturing for Stroud to close the door. “Alistair. Thank you for coming.”

Alistair doesn’t know what to say, so he simply gives a respectful nod and stands in front of her desk. Every nerve in his body is keyed up so tight he feels like a lute string about to snap, but he does his best to look normal and… unsuspicious. Definitely not like he’s hiding a letter from a former Orlesian bard about a potential Warden conspiracy in his pocket.

“What can I do for you, Commander?”

Leonie takes a moment to regard him. There is a faint twist to her mouth that might be a smile, though there is no amusement in her dark eyes. “I have a mission for you, Alistair. It won’t be much fun, I’m afraid.”

Alistair opens his mouth, then closes it, nonplussed. The Commander’s manner is oddly diffident. No Grey Warden mission would fall under Alistair’s idea of _fun_ , but Leonie seems almost hesitant to tell him the details. A mission that makes the Warden-Commander uneasy is not one Alistair particularly wants to undertake. But what choice does he have?

"What is the mission, Commander?”

She gestures to Stroud. “Tell him.”

“I was sent to Orlais to investigate some disturbing rumors regarding Warden-Commander Clarel.” Stroud pauses. “Did you know of these rumors, Alistair?”

Alistair frowns. “There are always ridiculous rumors floating around the Keep. If the junior Wardens trained half as much as they gossiped, we’d have reclaimed the Primeval Thaig by now.”

It’s hard to tell, but Alistair thinks the Warden half-smiles at his sarcasm. “Be that as it may. I speak of a particular rumor, of Warden-Commander Clarel having taken a Tevinter mage as a lover and allowing him to command the Wardens as if they were his own private guard.”

“Last week I heard one of the new recruits saying that I was once the enslaved lover of the man-eating Witch of the Wilds,” Alistair says cautiously. “I don’t really take anything they say seriously.”

This time he’s sure he sees a glint of humor in the other man’s eyes, though his expression remains stern. “I am disappointed to learn that one is untrue. But the one concerning Clarel caught our attention because it was being echoed by some of our more reliable sources. Not that the Tevinter mage was her lover, but that he had somehow made himself an integral part of Clarel’s inner circle, and that he was proposing blood magic rituals as a way for Wardens to better combat the darkspawn. When we tried to contact informants in Orlais, we received no reply. So Leonie asked me to travel to Orlais and meet Clarel face-to-face, to ascertain if any of this was true.”

Alistair swallows, and immediately he feels Leonie’s eyes on him sharpening. “Do you have something you wish to share, Warden?”

Well, there seems no point in hiding his information any further. He will just have to hope that his instincts regarding Leonie are not wrong, otherwise he may find himself in the keep’s dungeon before the day is out.

“I received a letter today from an old friend. She says the Orlesian Wardens have all disappeared, and no one knows where they’ve gone.”

“A friend?” Leonie repeats. “And would you stake your life on her words, Alistair? The lives of your brothers and sisters?”

“I would,” he replies without hesitation.

Leonie doesn’t press the issue. Her mouth twists in an odd smile, as if his news has made her realize something she doesn’t particularly care for. “Very well. Carry on, Stroud.”

“I gathered a few of the younger Wardens and we set off for Orlais under the pretext of a routine visit. But as we approached the border…” Stroud trails off, looking off into the distance as he recalls something that is clearly unsettling. “All of us started hearing it.”

“Hearing… what?”

“The Calling.”

Stroud says it flatly, almost without emotion. He pauses for a moment before continuing his story, his eyes still focused on something beyond the four walls of the room.

“At first, I thought… I assumed it was my time. It was earlier than I’d expected, or hoped, but it is not unheard of for a Warden my age to hear it. I was just praying I could keep my sanity until we reached Clarel in Orlais. But then I realized that the younger Wardens were hearing it, too. Their nightmares grew ever frequent, and even during the day I caught them standing in the middle of a task, their minds clouded and their bodies paralyzed with fear.”

Alistair realizes he is holding his breath and inhales a little too loudly. “Did they understand what was happening?”

Stroud shakes his head. “I think they each thought they were going mad. None of them wished to even speak of it to me.” A frown creases his brow. “And yet it seemed impossible that all of us could be hearing the Calling at once. One of the junior Wardens is barely a year past his Joining. So I turned back to Vigil’s Keep in the hopes that we would find answers here.”

Stroud pauses again, and then shakes his head in disbelief at his own story. “But as soon as the border was well behind us, the voices simply stopped. By the time we arrived back in Amaranthine, it was as if it had never happened.”

He stops speaking, and Alistair wonders if it would be rude for him to swoon onto the nearest chair like a maiden in need of smelling salts. Stroud has spun a tale worthy of a bard. He needs a moment to gather his thoughts before he speaks; the last thing he wants is to open his mouth and sound like a babbling fool in front of the Commander.

“Something in Orlais is causing Wardens to hear the Calling. Or to think they are hearing it. If it were a true Calling, it shouldn’t matter where you are.” He absentmindedly taps his finger on the pocket holding Leliana’s letter. “And this is connected to the disappearance of the Orlesian Wardens. But where have they gone?” His eyes wander around the map of Thedas on the wall. Even the greenest novice knows you can’t outrun the Calling. “My friend mentioned rumors they’re heading west, but no details beyond that. Does all of this have something to do with this supposed Tevinter magister? Do we even know he actually exists?”

“We know nothing for certain.” Stroud seems almost unreasonably calm given the circumstances. “All we know is the Orlesian Wardens are unreachable, and that they are all most likely hearing the Calling at this very moment.”

Alistair shivers. In normal circumstances, hearing the Calling means it is time for you to head to the Deep Roads and end your life while you still have the means to do so with dignity. Is that what all the Orlesian Wardens are planning on doing? Some sort of mass suicide? The possibility is almost too terrible to contemplate.

“There is another matter.”

Leonie’s words almost make Alistair laugh – of course there’s more. Disappearing Wardens and a false Calling just aren’t enough bad news for one day.

“When these rumors concerning Clarel first surfaced, I sent a raven to Weisshaupt to ask for guidance. Weisshaupt did not reply, not even after I sent two more after the first one. Then just yesterday a letter came, sealed by the First Warden.” She taps a document on her desk. “It summons all of us to Weisshaupt. There is no reason given, and the letter makes no mention of Clarel.”

Alistair rubs his forehead with the back of his hand, now well and truly overwhelmed. There is a sinking feeling within him that he hasn’t felt since that fateful morning he’d awoken in Flemeth’s hut to the realization that he and Solona were the only two survivors from the Battle at Ostagar. It is a feeling of despair, underlined with helpless panic. A sharp yearning for Solona clenches in his throat. If only she were here. She was always the wiser one, the one who wasn’t afraid to make the difficult decisions. It is a useless thought, and he squashes it before it can consume him.

“I am not taking all my people to Weisshaupt. It would be madness.” Leonie is calm and certain, but already Alistair feels as if the word _treason_ has been branded on their foreheads. She is talking about disobeying a direct order from the First Warden. “All of this cannot be a coincidence. There is something going on, something insidious, but we do not have the luxury to wait for more information.”

She looks at Alistair, and there is something in her eyes he can’t quite read. It is almost apologetic, or perhaps regretful. “Alistair. Out of all the Wardens here, you are the last I wish to burden with this task. But circumstances leave me little choice. You have already sacrificed so much to our Order and all I have to offer you in return is my absolute trust. And that is a poor reward for your service, for it means I must ask even more of you.”

The praise makes him uncomfortable, but he does his best not to squirm like a boy in front of his teacher. “I am honored by your trust, Commander. Just tell me what you need me to do.”

“I am asking you to go to Orlais and get to the bottom of whatever is happening there.” Leonie turns back to the map, staring at it as if the answers are hiding somewhere in the topography. “It will not be an easy task, particularly since you will not be able to avoid hearing the Calling yourself once you approach Orlais. And the Orlesian Wardens will most likely be terrified and desperate. But your words will carry weight with them, because to them you are a hero, the ideal they aspire to. The words of one of the two heroes of the Fifth Blight. Maker willing, they will listen to you. Clarel will listen to you.”

Alistair feels like a fraud now more than ever. Why would anyone, never mind the Warden-Commander of Orlais, listen to him? Solona was the one who’d united Thedas against the Blight. Without her, he might as well have taken the treaties and made them into cheese, for all the good they would have done.

His mind churns with misgivings, but his Commander is looking at him with a fierce intensity that would take a braver man than him to contradict. “I will do my best, Commander. I swear it.”

“It goes without saying that none of this can be shared with anyone outside of this room.” Leonie speaks in the iron tone of a Commander that will brook no disagreement. “We keep our Calling a secret from outsiders, with good reason. If word were to spread that every Warden in Orlais was losing their mind, no one would ever have faith in us ever again.”

“I know my duty, Commander.” Alistair answers almost automatically. She needn’t worry about him sharing Warden secrets with outsiders. Even if he were inclined to, who would he share them with?

“I would expect no less.” Leonie nods, her mind clearly already on the next item of business. “Now, then. I will be going to Weisshaupt.”

Stroud shifts his stance but says nothing, though Alistair feels the disapproval radiating from him like a palpable heat. Leonie gives him a wry glance. “The First Warden has ordered it, and I will not risk the lives of my people, but someone must go and discover why they summon us without the courtesy of an explanation.”

“Then it should be me,” Stroud argues, though with the air of a man who has already made the same argument to no avail. “You are needed here. Let _me_ go to Weisshaupt and learn the truth of what is happening. The Ferelden Wardens need their Commander to lead them.”

Leonie shakes her head. “Regardless of our intentions, we are disobeying a direct order from the First Warden. If someone needs to answer for it, it must be me. And they will be more careful about how they punish a Warden-Commander. My rank offers me some protection, at least.”

Her smile is grim, and Alistair feels a shiver go up his spine. Being a Warden-Commander accused of treason might mean she will face the dignity of the axe rather than the humiliation of the noose. Cold comfort, but Leonie isn’t the kind of woman to dwell on such things.

“No, Stroud, you must stay here and keep order in Vigil’s Keep. I entrust the lives of our Wardens in your hands. That is not a duty to be taken lightly.”

Stroud bows his head in reluctant acceptance. “So, I am to warm my old bones by the fireplace here, while the two of you ride off into danger.”

“Such a terrible fate,” Leonie jests.

Alistair shakes his head. Wardens only seem happy when they’re risking their lives for hopeless causes. Maker forbid they spend more than a week without imminent danger breathing down their necks. Sometimes he wonders if he’s the only sane Warden left in Thedas. Though if what Stroud says is true, that won’t be the case for much longer.

***

The Calling starts as an indistinct humming that is barely even there. As he nears the Orlesian border, it grows from a single strain of discordant music to the whisperings of a multitude. It tickles the edges of his consciousness, an itch just out of reach, and soon he develops a crick in his neck from tilting his head, like a dog trying to hear a distant whistle.

The nightmares grow sharper, darker, more frequent. By the time he crosses into Orlais, he is waking every night drenched in sweat, his mouth dry with fear, his throat tight with dread.

It’s hard to remember that this is a “false” Calling. There is nothing false about the strain of music curling within him, sinking hooks into his mind that tug at him insistently, beckoning him towards the Deep Roads. The temptation to follow is not quite overwhelming – not yet. But it is always there.

Alistair’s musings on what could be causing this Calling inevitably lead him to his favorite pet conspiracy theory – Corypheus. He’d long since given up the search for the ancient darkspawn, mostly because it was impossible to prove he wasn’t dead. Alistair hadn’t even succeeded in contacting Larius, despite hearing vague rumors of a wandering Warden matching his description. And Hawke had been so certain she’d killed him. The woman had a vicious temper and a rough tongue, but she hadn’t seemed like the type to mess up killing a darkspawn.

Gradually, the question of Corypheus had been pushed aside by his other duties. But now he finds himself wondering. Corypheus had proven he was capable of clouding the minds of Wardens. Could he possibly behind this false Calling affecting the Wardens of Orlais? Does even Corypheus have that kind of power? So little is known about the Magisters Sidereal, those foolish men who were twisted into monster by their own lust for power. It doesn’t seem beyond the bounds of possibility that a creature with such origins might be capable of such a thing.

Alistair isn’t sure if he wants to be right or wrong about this. If he is wrong, then the origins of this false Calling are still a mystery waiting to be solved. But if he is right, it means they are facing a darkspawn who is not only immortal but also untouchable. What chance do Wardens have against a monster that can turn their own minds against them?

The only silver lining is that he would be able to go back and tell Hawke _I told you so._ The satisfaction he would feel at winning that argument would almost be good enough to make up for everything else.

***

Clarel is tall and lean, her close-shaven head emphasizing her severe cheekbones and stern mouth. Her grey eyes burn fitfully, underlined by dark shadows, and Alistair knows that the nightmares have been plaguing her sleep, too. But she still welcomes Alistair with a sincere smile and clasps his hand in front of all the other Wardens. She has never met him before, but of course his reputation precedes him. It’s something that’s he’s always found vaguely embarrassing. This time, he’s actually grateful, since it means she doesn’t seem interested in questioning the timing of his appearance.

As they walk through the camp, Alistair takes note of the other Wardens: their wan faces and bloodshot eyes. There is a pervasive undercurrent of tension throughout. Everyone is on edge. He catches a whiff of alcohol at several different times as various Wardens move forward to greet him. Many of them seem distracted, their heads constantly half-turning as if expecting to see something over their shoulders. He keeps an eye out for Alyne – he hasn’t seen her in quite some time. The last he heard of her was that she’d rejoined the Orlesian Wardens over a year ago. But he sees no sign of her.

He is soon introduced to the rumored Tevinter magister, though if he is Clarel’s lover, Alistair will eat his boots. Lord Livius Erimond is short, with beady eyes and an oily smile, and his physique is definitely not what one would call battle-hardened. He looks positively dumpy beside Clarel, who despite being a mage moves with the deadly grace of a warrior. Not to mention he somehow manages to be both condescending and obsequious at the same time. And yet somehow he has gained Clarel’s ear and her trust. There is no doubt she has spilled Warden secret to this odious man, secrets that they’ve been tasked to take to their graves. Alistair can only attribute her lack of clear judgement to the Calling that is surely filling her mind. He wants to speak with her alone so he can tell her how they have proof the Calling is not real. But Erimond will not leave her side, and Clarel doesn’t seem inclined to send him away.

“Have you received word from Weisshaupt, Commander?” he asks carefully once the three of them are alone in her tent. “The summons?”

Clarel considers him, veiled suspicion in her grey eyes. For a moment she loses focus, and Alistair knows she is listening to the song of multitudes, the song that is calling to them all. Then she blinks rapidly, pulling herself together through sheer force of will.

“If there has been a summons, why are you not there yourself, Warden?”

Alistair has his answer ready. “I’ve been scouting in Orlais for the past few months. My Commander sent word that I should travel to Weisshaupt with the Orlesian Wardens, but you’d already left your holdings by the time I arrived. I’d expected you’d be further north by now, though.”

Erimond is hovering in the background, not quite part of the conversation but still poised to interrupt at any moment. With the Calling in his ear and this ridiculous man skulking in the shadows, Alistair has to make a real effort to keep the irritation from showing on his face. He presents the magister with a bland smile as he awaits Clarel’s reply.

“We are not going to Weisshaupt.” Clarel speaks softly, but there is steel in her words. “It is a waste of time. We are heading towards the Western Approach.”

“Are there reports of darkspawn so far west?” Alistair feigns surprise.

“We go to end all darkspawn forever.” The Warden-Commander almost seems to be talking to herself. “When we are done, there will be no more need for Grey Wardens. No more needless sacrifices for a people who loathe us even as they hide behind our shields. No more Blights.”

Alistair is unable to stop himself from starting back in surprise. Has the Calling already driven Clarel to insanity? Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Erimond staring avidly at his face, an unpleasant smile curling his lips.

“What your Commander says is true, Warden.” His Tevinter accent is clipped and precise. “We have found a way to end all Blights. Once it is done, the Wardens will be free.”

Clarel points a finger at Alistair. “Don’t tell me you don’t hear it, Alistair. The Calling.”

He hesitates, but she answers her own question. “Everyone is hearing it. There is no escape.” She shakes her head, her eyes closed tightly as if in pain. “We are dealing with it as best we can, but how long can we hold out? And if all of us file into the Deep Roads and accept our deaths? Then what will become of Thedas when it comes time for the next Blight?”

Alistair is silent, the pain in her voice making it difficult for him to think of an answer. The Warden-Commander opens her eyes, resolve hardening her features. “There is no other way. We must end it now, before it is too late.”

“How in the name of the Maker are we going to stop all future Blights?” Alistair tries to keep his voice steady and reasonable. It is alarming that Clarel has somehow convinced herself this is even possible. “We would have to kill all the Old Gods slumbering in the Deep Roads. It’s not exactly as easy as sneaking in through their backdoor and clubbing them over the head while they’re not looking.”

“Erimond has found a way.” Clarel ignores his flippant jest, staring at Alistair as if she can convince him through sheer force of will. “It will mean sacrifice on our parts – the sacrifice of many. But that is nothing new for the Wardens. Always we sacrifice so that the people of Thedas may live. But this one will be our last.”

Alistair turns to Erimond, his curiosity piqued despite himself. The magister smiles, though his eyes remain cold and calculating.

“I know magic that can imbue mages with power, more power than any human could ever hope to gain on their own.”

Alistair is no expert on magic, but inhuman power usually means one thing. “You mean blood magic.”

“And so what if I do?” Erimon scoffs. “There is no such thing as good magic and evil magic. There is only magic and how you choose to use it. An army of such mages would be able to fight their way through the Deep Roads and kill the Old Gods before they wake and become Archdemons. A simple plan.”

“An insane plan.” Alistair stares at Clarel, too shocked to dissemble any longer. “You are proposing to use blood magic for an insane plan that we’re not even sure will succeed.”

“It will succeed.” Clarel fires back. “Not even an Archdemon could withstand an army of such mages. And we will kill them as they sleep, before they are even aware of what is happening.”

Alistair tries a different tack, desperate to make the Commander see some sense. “How will we even _find_ the Old Gods? They are buried so deep that even the darkspawn have trouble finding them. It takes them centuries, and that’s with them spending all their time tunneling with nothing better to do.”

“Wardens are not darkspawn.” Erimond shrugs. “Darkspawn are stupid creatures, closer to beast than human. They rely only their instincts. Wardens with a clear purpose will move far more swiftly that hurlocs and genlocs tunneling blindly in the dark. And the blood of the Old Gods will be calling to you. It will be hard not to find them, I should think.”

The music in the back of Alistair’s mind seems to swell into a brief crescendo, a cacophony of countless voices that saturates his senses with a sickening, awful desire. Alistair gives his head a hard shake. When he looks up, he sees Clarel watching him, her face drawn with exhaustion and empathy.

“It will bring an end to our suffering, Alistair, and it will guarantee the future of all of Thedas. It requires sacrifice, but we are Wardens. Our lives are not our own. And this sacrifice, at least, will not be in vain.”

“This is not a true Calling,” Alistair says desperately. He must make Clarel see reason. “The Ferelden Wardens are not hearing it.”

Clarel’s eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

He quickly tells her about Stroud and his Wardens, and how the Calling disappeared once they left Orlais. “If it were a true Calling, Commander, it should be driving every Warden in Thedas mad. But for some reason it is only centered in Orlais.”

“What a preposterous idea.” Erimond scoffs. “If the Ferelden Wardens aren’t hearing it now, they certainly will be hearing it soon. How can a false Calling even be possible?”

“The Calling is tied to the darkspawn blood in our veins. You know this, Alistair.” Clarel speaks sharply, clearly angered by his arguments. “What magic could manipulate darkspawn blood? The idea is preposterous.”

Alistair hesitates for a moment, but now is not the time for caution. “Not human magic. Darkspawn magic. Corypheus has the power to manipulate the minds of Wardens. This Calling could be caused by him.”

“Corypheus?” Erimond sputters theatrically. “Who is this Corypheus?”

“Corypheus is dead, Alistair.” Clarel crosses her arms tightly against her chest. “He was killed by the Champion of Kirkwall. Everyone knows the story.”

“But what if he isn’t?” Alistair tries to persist, but he is cut off by Clarel.

“You should be ashamed of yourself, Warden. I present you with the best chance we have of ending the Blights forever and your response is to throw up weak excuses in a transparent attempt to avoid a difficult decision. Are you afraid, Alistair?” Her soft voice is rich with scorn, and despite everything he feels a flush of shame heating his cheeks. “I expected better from the man who fought at the side of the Hero of Ferelden and ended the Fifth Blight. Do you know how much the younger Wardens look up to you? They speak your name as if you are a living legend, a hero in the flesh. This is not an easy path, but it is a necessary one. Surely as a senior Warden, it is your duty to lead by example. Have you forgotten the words of our vows?”

In death, sacrifice. Yes, but not pointless sacrifice. Not blood magic sacrifice, unless he is very much mistaken. But Clarel’s face is lit with fervor, and he realizes she cannot be reasoned with. The fear provoked by the Calling and the lure of freeing all her people from the burden of a thankless duty has blinded her. She will only hear what she wants to hear.

Erimond is wearing a comically solemn face, but one corner of his mouth twitches in what looks suspiciously like a smirk. What does _he_ get out of this? Is he merely a blood mage looking for an excuse to practice his magic? Or is there something more insidious at work? Alistair wants nothing more than to slam a fist into his smug face, but that would be disastrous. He needs time to gather his thoughts and figure out what to do, now that he knows exactly what Clarel is planning.

“My apologies, Commander,” he says, bowing his head to better hide his face. “It’s only that you have given me a lot to think about, and it’s been a long day.”

When he looks back up, Clarel’s expression has somewhat softened, though her eyes are still sharp with disapproval. “Get some rest, Warden. We will speak again tomorrow.”

***

He is walking through a barren landscape, surrounded by rocks and dust. The sky is the color of a sickly green bruise. Everything seems oddly vague, as if he is looking at the world through a slightly warped piece of glass. The music of the Calling hovers in the air, a constant accompaniment to his thoughts. In the far distance, he sees a vast city built on a foundation of black rock, suspended above the horizon.

With his next step, there is a shift. The world tilts sideways. Abruptly he is standing next to a crackling campfire in the middle of a clearing. He looks up to see the night sky, the blackness dotted with the scattering of familiar constellations. The muffled sounds of conversation make him turn his head, and he draws in a confused breath.

Sten is sitting on a nearby boulder, meticulously polishing his sword, while Leliana sits in the grass at his feet with her harp in her lap. She is keeping up a stream of chatter, though for some reason Alistair is unable to make out quite what she is saying. The Qunari warrior occasionally grunts by way of response.

Holding his breath, Alistair scans the campsite. They are all there. Zevran is tussling with Honey, teasing the Mabari hound with a thick ox bone. Wynne is sitting at the entrance to her tent, reading a book to Shale by the light of a wisp. Oghren is guzzling a bottle of Maker only knows what and belching with gusto. Morrigan is a little way off, pointedly ignoring everyone as she grinds herbs with her mortar and pestle.

He turns around very slowly, afraid that any sudden movement will disturb the fragile reality of this place. She is standing at arm’s length, her hands clasped in front of her, looking up at him gravely. Her eyes, with their cat-like tilt, are the deep green of forest moss. Unruly tendrils of her dark hair have escaped from her braid and gleam a red-gold in the firelight.

“Alistair.” The familiar lilt of her voice hits him like a punch to the gut. “I’ve missed you.”

He turns his head and squeezes his eyes shut against the tears threatening to overflow. “You’re not real. This is just a dream.”

“We are in the Fade. Everything is real, here.” Unexpectedly, she laughs. “Unless you had too much cheese for dinner again. Then it’s possible you’re just suffering from indigestion.”

He shakes his head with a huff of amused disbelief. “Unbelievable. Even as a Fade spirit, you won’t let me enjoy my cheese in peace.”

“If by enjoy you mean endure nightmares brought on by an upset stomach.”

She grins, and he finds himself grinning back at her despite himself. Well, if it is a dream, he might as well enjoy it. Certainly it is far more pleasant than the dreams he’s been having of late.

“Why here?” He gestures to the camp site and their companions in the background, all busily engaged in their tasks without a second glance at the two of them.

“It’s what I remember as home.” Solona says quietly, her smile turning wistful. “It’s ridiculous to think of the Blight with any sort of fondness, I know. But camp was the one place I always felt safe. And I had a family around me, for better or for worse.”

“Oh yes, our family.” Alistair replies dryly. “Including the ancient golem with a predilection for slaughtering pigeons and the man-hating witch with a lump of coal in place of a heart.”

“Admit it, you miss everyone. Even Morrigan.” Solona teases him.

“I miss _you._ ” Impulsively, he takes her hand. He is half-expecting her to be insubstantial, like a ghost, but her flesh is warm and familiar against his own. He grips it tightly, suddenly overwhelmed at the emotions filling his chest, too numerous to name,

She looks at him, still smiling, but her eyes are shining with tears. “I’m so sorry, Alistair. I know I took the coward’s way out.”

“Yes, Solona, everyone remembers you, the Hero of Ferelden who sacrificed her own life to stop the Blight, as a hopeless coward. Really, you should be ashamed of yourself.”

He is rewarded by her wry laughter. “But I was. It’s being left behind that is the hard part. And I couldn’t face it. It’s you who are the strong one, Alistair. My love.” She reaches up and lays her hand against his face, gently rubbing her fingers along his stubble in an achingly familiar way. “And now Thedas needs you once again.”

He catches her hand and presses his lips against her palm. “I can’t do this, Solona.” Here, in the Fade, he finally whispers aloud his greatest fear. “I will fail the Wardens, just as I failed you.”

“You didn’t fail me, Alistair.” Solona gently turns his head so he’s looking straight into her eyes. “And you won’t fail the Wardens, either.”

“I am touched by your faith in me, love.” He can’t help a dry chuckle. “But in case you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly surrounded by allies at the moment.”

“You know, funnily enough that sounds like the beginning of a story I once heard.” Solona’s wide smile makes his heart ache, and selfishly he wishes this dream could last forever. “There were these two Wardens, you see, and they had to save Ferelden from the Blight all on their own…”

“Two being the important word.” He interrupts her. “I’m on my own now.”

“But you don’t have to be.” Solona persists. She looks at him earnestly, tightening her hand on his. “You must find Hawke and ask for her help.”

“Hawke?” Alistair echoes, confused at her wholly unexpected suggestion. “Maker’s breath, Solona. Why would I need Hawke? She’s not even a Warden. And Leonie specifically ordered us to keep this a secret from outsiders.”

Solona gives him an exasperated look. “Since when has keeping secrets ever benefited our Order?”

“Not to mention she’s an extremely grumpy and not very nice person. She may have even hurt my feelings.”

“Alistair, I’m serious.” Solona slaps him lightly on the shoulder. “Right now, the Wardens are out of their minds with fear. You need Hawke precisely because she is not a Warden. And she is not afraid of doing what needs to be done. Even when it comes at great personal cost.” She squeezes his fingers again, her words heavy with sadness.

“She is loyal to no one but herself.” Alistair argues back. “Why would she help the Wardens? She owes us nothing.” The memory of Hawke’s dismissive arrogance is still vivid in his mind.

“Are the Warden oaths the only thing that make you who you are?” Solona says sternly, and her chin sets in that stubborn curve he knows too well. “Hawke carries the burden of duty just as much as you do. As we did. Like us, she accepts what she must do because there are no other alternatives in her mind.”

“Hawke is nothing like you. Like us. Her lover was a mage possessed by a demon and his madness drove him to kill hundreds of innocents in Kirkwall. At the very least that shows poor judgement on her part.”

“Have you forgotten Redcliffe?” Solona drops her gaze. “My poor judgement cost the lives of every person in that village.”

Alistair shakes his head in denial. “We were trying to save Conor’s life.”

“At what cost?” Solona’s voice breaks on those words, and Alistair feels his throat burn as he remembers returning to Redcliffe with the Circle mages only to find the village turned into a literal ghost town. “I should have killed the abomination that child had become, and then the people of the village would have lived. Instead we wasted precious time traveling to the Circle. Redcliffe paid dearly for that mistake.” She looks up at him. “I don’t mean to dredge up the past, only to remind you that all of us have made mistakes that other people have had to bear the cost of.”

He exhales slowly, still reluctant to give in. “Are you telling me to abandon the Wardens? In search of a woman I barely know who may or may not be able to help me?”

“What good can you do the Wardens here?” Solona demands. “You’ll be lucky if Clarel doesn’t have you clapped in irons for defying her. Even if you convince her you’re on her side, she’ll have you watched day and night. And the Calling will be driving you closer to madness with every passing moment.” She takes his face in her hands, her eyes wide with conviction. “I know it’s a lot to ask. But right now, you are their only hope.”

He takes her hands, presses them to his chest. She leans into him, and he rests his chin on her hair. “Speaking from experience, being the only hope is not much fun,” he mutters with a sigh of resignation. “Going slowly crazy almost sounds like the better alternative, especially if it involves everyone dancing in their knickers under a full moon.”

“It’s more likely it will involve everyone drooling and gnawing on each other’s limbs,” Solona retorts lightheartedly. “Not half as fun, I’m afraid.”

Alistair wraps his arms around her and crushes her close with a rush of desperate longing. He’s missed this so much – the comfortable warmth of their banter, hearing her laughing at his stupid jests. Being able to bare his heart to someone he knows will understand. It’s been ten years, and Leliana was right – time has softened his grief, but it’s still there, and this dream has made him painfully aware of that gaping emptiness inside his soul; not gone but only somewhat forgotten.

He knows he must soon wake and return to the grim reality of the task that lies before him. But for the moment he bends his head and kisses his Solona as tenderly as he can bear to, fearful that he will shatter the delicate architecture of this dreamscape. She twines her arms around his neck and returns his kiss, her mouth opening hungrily against his own as his desire overcomes his caution.

***

He awakens, disoriented and shivering in the cold damp air. There is a dark figure crouching over him. Instinctively he jerks back, scrambling for his sword.

“Stop making so much noise, you idiot.”

Alistair freezes. The sky is still pitch black, though instinct tells him dawn is not too far away. The figure is cloaked and hooded, no more than a silhouette in the darkness. But he knows that voice, that cultured accent.

“ _Alyne?_ ”

“Be silent and listen.” Her voice is barely a whisper, but somehow it still manages to be full of anger. “Clarel plans to have you put in chains come morning. She thinks you’re going straight to Weisshaupt to alert the First Warden of what she plans.”

Alistair tenses. He can feel the hilt of his sword against his fingertips, though he doesn’t dare move. “Why are you telling me this?”

There is a moment of silence. “Are you hearing it, too?”

No need to ask what she means. “Yes. But it’s not what you think it is.”

“Does it even matter?” Alyne’s voice is full of quiet despair. She lets out a measured breath. “I never liked you, you know.”

“You’re hurting my manly feelings, Alyne.”

His sarcasm is lost on her. “Companion to the fabled Hero of Ferelden. Yet all you ever do is skirt the rules and make stupid jokes.”

“Some people think I’m quite amusing.”

Alyne makes an exasperated noise. “Don’t make me regret this, Alistair. If Clarel knew I was warning you, she’d have me executed for insubordination. And she’d have every right.”

Alistair eyes her warily. “Why _are_ you warning me?”

“Because I’m a coward.” The bitterly candid admission gives him pause, an unexpected echo of Solona’s words in the Fade. “Being a Warden is all I’ve ever known. I know what Clarel is doing is insane. But every day, the singing in my blood grows louder.” She shivers. “You are a fool, Alistair, but you are not a coward. You _must_ find a way to save the Wardens, or we are all doomed. One way or the other.”

“You are no coward, Alyne.” He suddenly feels ashamed of trying to make light of the situation – for Alyne to defy her Warden-Commander like this is no laughing matter. What has he done to deserve her trust? But now is not the time to dwell on his feelings of inadequacy. She has risked everything to warn him, and now he must make sure it hasn’t been in vain. “I swear to you that I will find a way. On my honor as a Warden, I swear it.”

“You _are_ a fool.” Her whisper holds the faintest hint of amusement. “But perhaps a fool is what we need right now. Maker watch over you, Alistair.”

Alyne melts back into the shadows, as quiet as a ghost. Alistair takes a moment to take stock of his situation. He can hear the indistinct murmuring of the Wardens standing watch near the fire, though he is too far away to make out what they’re saying. Otherwise, the camp is quiet, though the music of the Calling still floats thought the back of his mind, as insidious as ever.

Moving quickly, he folds his bedroll and gathers his things, trying to make as little noise as possible. He is no rogue, trained in the covert arts. Getting away without making any noise is a slow and tortuous process, one foot carefully in front of the other with bated breath. As soon as he escapes the outer perimeter of the camp, he quickens his pace, weaving through the trees as swiftly as he dares. His one advantage is that Clarel will assume he is either heading for Weisshaupt or back to Amaranthine. He will head south for now, to throw them off his trail, and then he will have to find a way to send a bird to Hawke’s friend, the Guard-Captain in Kirkwall.

He tries not to think about what he’s doing. Desertion, when his people need him most. But he must be coldly rational. Solona is right – he can do nothing here, other than follow the Wardens into gradual madness. He can only hope she is also right about Hawke.

Suddenly, the sky is filled with a flash of white light. Alistair throws up an arm to shield his face, blinded by the unexpected intrusion. What in the Maker’s name…?

Before he can form a coherent thought, the light fades just as abruptly as it appeared. He blinks rapidly, disoriented, and stares upwards. The night has returned, but the sky is no longer the same. The familiar darkness is now stained with an eerie green light, bathing everything in a softly ominous glow. To the south, he sees something so extraordinarily disturbing that his mind goes momentarily blank, unable to process the reality before it.

The sky has been torn open.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note about a non-canonical detail - Solona and Alistair refer to going to seek help from the Circle for Conor, only to return and find that the villagers had all been killed. I always thought what actually happens in the game is unrealistic - that if you go to the Circle and come back with help, Redcliffe is exactly the way you left it. Why would you assume that the demon would be content to behave itself for so long after it spent so much time wreaking havoc? It would be a hopelessly naive assumption. To me it makes sense for there to be more serious consequences for such a foolish decision.


	4. Subtlety and Ambush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke (a few weeks later): Desperate times create the most unexpected alliances.

_Hawke,_

_Please tell you’ve stopped hunkering in caves like some Chasind savage and are back to living like a civilized person. We all know the closest you ever wanted to be to nature was eating a salad. And three years is long enough to be beating yourself up over something that wasn’t your fault. Even the Elf thinks you’re overdoing it. When the broody mage-hating elf tells you you’re overdoing it, that’s a sign you need to rethink your life choices. I shouldn’t need to remind you that Blondie was literally possessed by a demon. You did your best to keep him sane for as long as you could. And even if he hadn’t snapped, there’s no way any of us could have known about Meredith. That’s all on Bartrand._

_Not that it matters who’s to blame. That’s my point, actually. There’s no point in blaming anyone, least of all yourself. The world was headed in this direction for a long time, and if we’re being honest, no one is going to come out of this shit smelling like roses._

_Speaking of shit_ _, there’s a lot of it going down in Haven right now, some of which you may have heard about if you’ve managed to drag yourself out from under your rock. At the very least I’m sure you’ve noticed the big hole in the sky after the explosion at the Conclave, or maybe all the other crazy rifts spewing demons all over the place. They’re calling the big one the Breach. There was only one survivor from the Conclave explosion – a girl named Evelyn Trevelyan – and when they found her she had a glowing green hole in her hand, exactly like the one in the sky, and apparently it gives her power over the rifts. You can’t make this shit up. Now they’re all calling her the Herald of Andraste and hoping she eventually can use it to close the big one. And by “they” I mean the reformed Inquisition. Fancy name for a bunch of rebels no one else in Thedas even wants to talk to._

_If it matters, there’s more than one familiar face here. Our old Templar pal Curly is one, and that Chantry spy, Nightingale, is another. The Seeker that pinched my nipples trying to get me to tell her where you are is also with us. (You’re welcome, by the way.) She has a temper worse than a bronto in mating season, but she does grow on you after a while._

_Anyway, I was with the Inquisition when they took the Herald to the Temple of Sacred Ashes to try and seal the Breach back up. Hawke, the place was covered in red lyrium. This wasn’t a few random outcroppings. It was sprouting up everywhere, like weeds. Killer weeds that drive people insane. And we’ve been seeing red lyrium nodes in other places, too. The Hinterlands, the Storm Coast – everywhere. They’re spreading faster than the pox in a Lowtown brothel._

_Maybe you’ve already seen them yourself and this is old news to you. But either way_ _it’s something we need to look into, fast. The Inquisition is doing its best, but we have a lot on our plate right now, what with closing rifts and helping refugees and trying to convince the Chantry we’re the good guys. And before you start rampaging across Thedas and setting everything on fire, all the Inquisition needs is some more information. Please don’t come out of your barbarian cave just to get yourself killed by some darkspawn supermage or the ghost of Bartrand or whatever is behind all this shit. You’ve done enough of being the hero for several lifetimes, and I don’t have any plans to write a sequel._

_Don’t send your letters directly to Haven. The Seeker here is still itching to get her hands on you, and I’ll shave my chest if the Nightingale hasn’t been reading everything that comes in or goes out of this place. Aveline and I have a system going, so send word to her if you learn anything._

_Don’t forget to take care of yourself._

_Your one and only authorized biographer,_

_Varric_

Hawke reads the letter several times over as she sips her wine. She can practically hear Varric’s affable baritone in her ear, tinged with his usual mix of sarcasm and affection. It makes her miss him terribly. Though he’s wrong about one thing, at least. Three years _isn’t_ long enough to stop blaming herself for Anders. Especially since it _was_ her fault. Time has made the pain easier to live with, but it hasn’t changed the facts of what happened. It never will.

Still, the years have given her enough perspective to agree with Varric on some points. _The world was headed in this direction for a long time_ _, and if we’re being honest, no one is going to come out of this shit smelling like roses._ Anders certainly lit the match that blew everything to shit, but even if he hadn’t, even if Hawke _had_ been able to stop him, the Mage-Templar War has been a long time coming. And while Hawke has plenty of blood on her hands, she’s certainly not the only one. There’s more than enough blame to go around. Cold comfort, but she’ll take what she can get.

Hawke skims the letter again. It doesn’t escape her notice that Varric refers to the Inquisition as “we.” She’s not quite sure how she feels about that. Jealousy that Varric – _her_ Varric – has found somewhere else to belong, but relief that his association with her hasn’t quite ruined his life forever, nipple-tweaking Seekers notwithstanding. For all his ostensible cynicism, Varric craves companionship. He is happiest in the thick of things, and it sounds like the Inquisition is certainly that.

She shakes her head, redirecting her thoughts. Red lyrium cropping up all over Thedas – that is something that merits her immediate attention. She hasn’t seen any of it herself, but that’s probably because she’s been traveling on the main roads and staying in towns ever since the Conclave explosion. The latest atrocity has ironically made it safer for her to travel in the open, secure in the knowledge that no one cares any longer about what happened in Kirkwall three long years ago.

Not that’s she’s complaining. Sleeping in the dirt with nothing but her own cloak for shelter and midges for company hasn’t been something she’s particularly enjoyed. Another point she will concede to Varric. Though she won’t tell him so.

Well, she is practically on the doorstep of the Ferelden Circle tower – or what used to be the Circle tower. Kinloch Hold is rumored to have one of the most extensive libraries in Ferelden. Her original aim in coming here was to offer whatever aid she can to whoever might be left. This is how she’s been spending her time these past few years: traveling from Circle to Circle, doing her best to help her fellow mages survive the chaos that has followed the events in Kirkwall. The only way she can think of to at least partly atone for her sins. But now it looks like she will be the one asking for help. Hopefully the tower and its resources are still intact. From the docks, at least, there is no discernible damage to the outer walls. Her sources have informed her the First Enchanter and Knight-Commander of the former Ferelden Circle are (were?) on fairly good terms, so perhaps the rebellion here was less bloody than in other parts of Ferelden. One can only hope.

The creak of the tavern door opening makes her look up. A handful of cloaked figures enter, avoiding eye contact as they make their way inside. Hawke catches a glimpse of blue and silver underneath. Wardens.

And just like that, Hawke suddenly has an idea. That Warden she ran into a few years back – Alistair. When they’d first met during the Qunari invasion, he’d asked her about red lyrium. It seems not impossible he might know more by this point. After all, he is a Grey Warden, and the red lyrium is from the Deep Roads. Hawke wouldn’t be surprised to learn it has some connection to darkspawn or the Blight in general. Perhaps the Grey Wardens have pursued their expeditions further in the intervening years.

Or perhaps the idiot actually took her advice and stayed the fuck away from it… which would mean he’d be no better informed than she is at the moment. Her own words coming back to bite her in the ass. Varric would appreciate the irony.

She is suddenly aware that one of the Wardens has stopped in front of her table, staring at her with dark eyes that are wide with shocked recognition. “You!”

Hawke tilts her head to one side. The woman is tall and slim, with dark waves framing a face that would be pretty if she didn’t look so hostile. An old enemy? No… the woman is not pleased to see Hawke, but she seems more annoyed than angry. Then all of a sudden, Hawke remembers.

“You were one of the Wardens in Kirkwall with Alistair.” Hawke finds herself grinning wickedly. “The bitchy one.”

The woman glares at her in frosty silence, clearly unamused. Hawke shakes her head with a laugh and gestures to the chair next to her. “Have a seat, Warden, and I’ll buy you a drink.”

“Why in the Maker’s name would I want to drink with _you_?”

“Why in the Maker’s name would you turn down free alcohol?” Hawke raises a brow. “Don’t tell me you’re still ticked off about the last time we met. Maker’s breath, that was six years ago. And anyway, shouldn’t _I_ be the angry one? _You_ were the ones who buggered off in the middle of a Qunari siege.”

“We are Grey Wardens, and Qunari are not darkspawn.”

Hawke is almost impressed by her stubbornness. “Look, Warden, I’m not looking for a quarrel. If I wanted to fight, you’d be on fire by now.” The other woman stiffens at this. Hawke flashes the sweetest smile she can muster. “But you’re not, are you? So have a seat and let me buy you a drink. If you still feel like fuming at me after that, I won’t stop you.”

The Warden hesitates. She glances over her shoulder at her companions, who have settled down at a table in a far corner. Finally, she waves a reassuring hand at them before deigning to take the chair next to Hawke, still eyeing her with suspicion. Hawke orders a bottle of wine. “I don’t even know your name.”

“Alyne.” She answers shortly. “And what about you? Do you still go by _Hawke_?”

Hawke has to laugh. No one does disdain better than an Orlesian, and Alyne seems to have it honed to a fine art. “You can call me Marian if you like. I’m feeling particularly generous today.”

Alyne frowns. “Marian is a perfectly respectable name. Why do you insist on going by Hawke?”

“It’s hard to build the proper reputation around a name like Marian.” Hawke shrugs. “I was trying to get people to fear me, not think I was some swooning maiden from a romance novel.”

Alyne huffs in what might just be amusement. “What would you recommend for someone with the family name Archambeau?”

“Alyne Archambeau?” Hawke shakes her head in mock despair as she exaggerates the Orlesian accent. “Clearly your destiny is to lounge on a fainting couch armed with nothing more dangerous than a lace fan.

Alyne barks a most unladylike laugh, and Hawke smirks back. It’s been so long since she’s had to socialize that she feels about as charming as a bogfisher, but somehow she has managed to get the grumpy Warden to stop looking at her like she’s a piece of shit stuck to her boot. Progress.

The wine arrives, and Hawke quickly uncorks it and pours two glasses. She pushes the first glass across the table towards Alyne. “To all of us swooning maidens,” Hawke quips, lifting her own glass before taking a careless swig. The wine is tart and leaves a sour aftertaste on her tongue, but Hawke doesn’t care, as long as it gets her inebriated.

Alyne indulges in a surprisingly long swallow, then silently stares into her wine glass with a frown. Hawke takes the opportunity to study her face. It is a pretty face but sharp with fatigue, her bloodshot eyes ringed with purple shadows. Of course, it is hardly surprising she should look tired – being a Warden isn’t known to be a relaxing occupation. And yet, there is something about the haggard lines of her features that makes Hawke wonder. What sort of urgent mission would require a Warden to push herself to such extremes in a time of no Blight?

“Are you going to bite my head off if I ask you what brings you to Kinloch Hold?” Hawke queries in a deliberately light-hearted tone.

She expects Alyne to snap at her, but instead the Warden gives her a considering look. “We have business in the area.” The corner of her mouth briefly quirks into a faint smirk. “Warden business.”

Hawke rolls her eyes at the familiar stonewalling. “I can’t imagine what _business_ the Wardens would have here. Have the Ferelden mages somehow managed to turn themselves into ogres?”

Alyne shrugs, taking another sip of her wine. Hawke sighs. “Well, whatever it is, surely it is the will of the Maker that our paths have crossed again after so many years.” She smiles at the Warden, her words dripping with insincerity.

Alyne looks at her, her brows furrowed in disapproval at her blatant irreverence. “What makes you say so?”

“As it happens, I have _business_ with Alistair.”

Hawke is about to say more, but Alyne’s reaction stops her dead. The Warden is staring at her like she’s just announced her plan to prance naked into the nearest Chantry and piss on the altar.

“What now, Alyne? If you tell me his location is Warden business, I may have to set you on fire after all.”

The Warden presses her lips together into a tight line and drops her eyes. With an effort, Hawke swallows her sarcasm and waits in silence. Something about the set of Alyne’s shoulders make her think the Warden is in the midst of an internal conflict. Now that is curious. Why would the question of Alistair’s whereabouts prove to be so controversial?

“We’ve been ordered to join a search party in the area.” Alyne finally speaks, lowering her voice so that Hawke finds herself leaning forward to catch her words. “There is… what you might call a manhunt going on at the moment.” Alyne looks away and takes another swallow of wine. “For a deserter and a traitor.”

“A traitor?” Hawke echoes, confused by this non sequitur. Desertion she can understand, but how does one _betray_ the Wardens? Anyone trying to join the darkspawn army would most likely just end up as their dinner. And anyway, there _isn’t_ any darkspawn army to join, not at the moment. Not to mention… what in the name of Andraste’s knickers does this have to do with Alistair?

“It is as vile as it is unexpected.” Alyne’s tone is curiously wooden, as if she is reciting lines from a play she’s not particularly interested in performing. “That a man who saved Ferelden from the Fifth Blight would turn his back on us now, when we need him more than ever.”

Hawke widens her eyes in disbelief. She opens her mouth, but Alyne shoots her a warning look, and she closes it without saying anything. Her mind is whirling with questions. The Wardens are hunting _Alistair_? As a _traitor_? She’s only met the man twice, but if he’s a traitor, she’ll shave her head and join the Chantry. And what does Alyne mean by _when we need him more than ever_? The Blight has been over for almost a decade, and the Wardens have no reason to care about the current Mage-Templar war. What danger could the Wardens possibly be facing?

Alyne abruptly drains her glass in one go. Then without warning she hurls the glass to the floor and leaps to her feet, glaring down at Hawke in open fury. “What did you just say to me?”

Hawke stares up at her, too startled to react. Alyne grabs her by the collar and hauls her to her feet before shoving her against the nearest wall. She is _quick_ – Hawke barely has time to blink before the breath is knocked out of her. She wheezes in panic, her mind already preparing a counterattack, but Alyne’s lips are against her ear, hissing urgently.

“ _They’re hunting him in Crestwood._ ”

Their eyes meet for a heartbeat, and Hawke gives the barest nod. Then the Warden shoves her to the side, spitting on the floor for emphasis. “Perhaps next time you’ll think twice before insulting a Warden, mercenary whore!”

The Wardens across the room are on their feet, but Alyne is already stalking over to join them, telling them loudly not to bother themselves. Hawke pulls herself up to her feet with a stifled groan, ignoring the curious stares of the other patrons. Then she quickly gathers her things and leaves. Let everyone think she is the humiliated loser. The Wardens have thankfully settled back down in their seats before she is out the door.

Hawke now has more questions than answers. A part of her is loudly protesting the idea of getting entangled in what is clearly some sort of internal conflict within the Warden ranks. If someone like Alyne – someone who probably thinks the sun shines out of the First Warden’s arse – is feeling conflicted about labeling Alistair as a traitor, there can be no clearer sign that the Wardens are in turmoil. But why should Hawke care whether they tear themselves apart from the inside out? Every encounter she’s had with the Wardens has proven them arrogant and incompetent, a bunch of arseholes who think they can do whatever they want in the name of the greater good. In Hawke’s experience, any time anyone utters the phrase “the greater good” it’s pretty much a guarantee they’re full of shit.

Even so, her gut tells her that somehow, this is all connected. The Breach. The red lyrium. Whatever shit is going on with the Wardens. It’s all happening too quickly to be a coincidence. She needs to find Alistair and shake some answers out of him. Preferably while he still has his head. With a fervent curse, Hawke turns southward and quickens her pace.

***

The name Crestwood conjures up images of an idyllic little village, surrounded by green pastures and filled with quaint little thatched houses full of amiably provincial country folk. What Hawke runs into instead is a complete nightmare: a region flooded with near constant rain and overrun by demons and the undead. And if a supernatural invasion weren’t enough, the local keep, long since abandoned, has become home to a group of ruthless bandits, preying on the unwary. Apparently there is also a wild wyvern nearby, snacking on anyone foolish enough to cross its path. Despite this laundry list of Crestwood’s woes, the fact that Hawke has more important problems to deal with is a grim testament to the sort of times they’re living in.

And of course, the Breach. The swirling vortex of darkness and green light dominates the sky to the south, a reminder of just how fucked up the world is at the moment.

She quickly hikes up to a reasonable vantage point, a cluster of cliffs that overlooks the giant reservoir just behind the main village. She imagines it would have been a popular picnic spot, before everything went to shit. There is a worn statue of what was perhaps once a wyvern, smoothened almost beyond recognition. An empty wine bottle rolls around in the overgrown grass, a relic of happier times. Hawke carelessly kicks it away and wipes the rain from her eyes, trying to take in the lay of the land. The water below her is black and uninviting, churned as if by an unseen hand. Hawke frowns as she contemplates the eerie green mist lingering above the reservoir. There must be a rift under the surface. Fucking brilliant. But it’s not a problem she can solve, so she forces herself to dismiss it from her mind. She has other business to attend to.

The air is heavy with drizzle, but Hawke is able to get a general idea of the area. To the north, she can see the dim outlines of Caer Bronach, the keep currently occupied by outlaws. Directly east of the village, some distance away, is the telltale green glow of another rift. Hawke has already encountered a few of those in her travels. Just looking at the pale light, even from this safe distance, makes her feel queasy – a literal tear in the fabric of reality, allowing all sorts of unearthly creatures to wander through at will. There is no good way to deal with the rifts, other than avoiding them altogether. No one in their right mind would be hiding nearby.

Although… what better way to hide than surrounding yourself with monsters? Of course, Wardens are not ordinary people, and Hawke doubts they will be so easily scared off by a horde of demons. Still, trying to effectively search such an area would be no easy task. Chaos would be on the side of the pursued: a clever person could easily use the threat of the monsters to keep their pursuers occupied while they evaded capture. And the rift would provide an endless supply of distractions. Even if the Wardens managed to clear the area once, it would soon be refilled with more of the same.

The question is, is Alistair that clever? Hawke snorts to herself and shakes her head. Her interactions with him haven’t given her much faith in his intelligence, but the village gossip indicates that the Wardens in the area are still on the hunt. So clearly he has managed to stay one step ahead. She will have to give him the benefit of the doubt, then.

Staff firmly in hand, Hawke sets out towards the rift.

***

When she finally finds Alistair, he is surrounded by a handful of Wardens in a clearing just off the main road. She takes shelter behind a tree and observes for the moment. The rain has swelled to a downpour, drenching her to the skin, and while she can see that he is yelling angrily at his fellow Wardens it’s impossible to make out what he’s saying. Not that it matters what he’s yammering about. The important thing is that they are outnumbered – it will be seven against two. Not the worst odds, but not the best either.

Hawke quietly casts a barrier spell that keeps the rain out of her eyes for a few precious moments. She counts one mage, four warriors, and two rogues with bows. She is fairly certain she can take the mage by surprise and strike him down before the rest can react, but that still leaves the other six bastards to deal with. If Alistair has the brains of a nug he’ll take out the archers first, but Hawke has no illusions about her own defenses – one swipe of a longsword and she’ll be no good to anyone.

Beyond the clearing, she can see the weird light of the rift. Even through the rain it’s clear that it’s pulsing, like a living heart torn out of some alien creature. Hawke has learned that usually means it’s about to spit out demons. At the moment they are all a safe distance away…

Well, that will have to change.

She squints back at Alistair, the rain pelting into her eyes once more. The other Wardens are starting to close in, but they seem reluctant to attack him outright. The orders must be to take him in alive. That will work in Hawke’s favor. Still, time is running out.

Hawke turns around and sprints through the trees. By the time she reaches the rift, it has produced a handful of demons: most of them vaguely human-shaped wraiths that glow with the same sullen green light as their source. One of them looks more solid, with grotesquely long limbs. Its deformed visage is dotted with a scattering of milky eyes and an impossibly large, drooping maw, filled with rows of jagged teeth all dripping with spittle. A terror demon.

It looks at Hawke, and for a moment she feels frozen with overwhelming fear, unable to draw her next breath.

“Fuck … _off_!”

The scream tears her throat with its intensity. With a painful effort she wrests back control of her mind. The demons all shriek, a high-pitched cacophony that sends chills down her spine. Hawke whirls around and runs back the way she came.

This time, she makes no effort to be silent. The rain has abated somewhat, from a thunderous downpour to a steady drumming, and the Wardens look up in surprise as she comes blundering through the trees. Alistair is still standing unharmed, though now weapons have been drawn on both sides. He stares at her for a moment, then does an almost comical double take, shock and confusion warring on his face.

“Demons!” she cries, loudly enough to heard over the rain. “Please, help me!”

The Wardens only have a split second to gape before the creatures come bursting into the clearing behind her. Hawke is already moving towards Alistair, casting a protective spell to boost both their defenses. And then everything is chaos.

Hawke quickly brings up a wall of ice that briefly shields herself and Alistair from the rest of the battle. It will only buy them a moment. He is still gawking at her in disbelief, the idiot.

“Now would be a great time to leave,” she snaps at him, pushing her wet hair out of her eyes. “Quickly, while they’re distracted.”

He closes his mouth and gives his head a hard shake. “I’m not leaving Wardens to become demon fodder.”

Hawke briefly considers turning him into an icicle. “Aren’t they here to drag you back in chains?” she hisses. “What do you care what happens to them?”

“They’re just following orders. That doesn’t mean they deserve to get slaughtered.”

Even in the fog and rain, Hawke can see the uncompromising glint in his steely gaze. With a growl of frustration she dispels the ice wall.

“You are a giant pain in the arse,” she snarls before whirling around to join the battle.

The demons aren’t stupid. They’ve targeted the Warden mage first, and his broken body is sprawled in the mud. Hawke sees the terror demon abruptly melt into thin air. The Wardens are too busy to notice. The warriors are desperately trying to keep the wraiths focused on themselves so the archers can maneuver themselves into better positions. In terms of numbers they are about evenly matched.

It seems to be working. The wraiths shriek and slash at the Wardens with their cruelly long claws, but for the most part their attacks land on shields and armor. The archers have managed to disengage with the foe entirely. One of them is scrambling up a boulder; the other is backing her way up to higher ground. Alistair has already taunted a couple of the wraiths into lunging at him, giving the other Warden a much-need reprieve.

Hawke ignores them all. She is straining her senses for any sign of the terror demon. She’s encountered them before, and they are far more dangerous than the wraiths. But water is running into her eyes and the drumming of the rain is filling her ears, making it impossible for her to focus.

Suddenly she sees a shadow erupt from behind one of the archers. The Warden cries out as she is thrown to the ground. The demon is on top of her in a heartbeat. It plunges its sharp talons straight through her back with a sickening squelch.

The other archer shouts in horror, his feet stumbling on the slippery rock. The demon straightens and starts to move towards its new target, but Hawke has already summoned a flurry of ice shards, cold and sharp. They hit the creature in quick succession, leaving it screeching, frozen mid-step for half a heartbeat. Then it whips its awful, teeth-filled visage towards her and pounces.

Hawke has only a second to react. She casts a protective barrier around herself just as the creature strikes. The barrier is almost instantly shattered. Hawke feels a sharp pain hit her left shoulder, as if she’s just rammed it into a stone wall. She grunts aloud from the impact but still manages to keep her feet. The barrier took the bulk of the blow, else she would be lying senseless on the ground.

The demon rears back for another strike.

Alistair’s sword takes it from behind, dealing a wicked stroke that sprays the air with black blood. It screams, whirling to face its new foe.

Hawke flings her staff upwards to call down a bolt of lightning. It strikes the creature in a blinding flash, paralyzing it in place as it writhes in agony. Only for a moment, but that’s all they need: Alistair swiftly lunges forward, putting the full force of his weight into his shield. It hits the demon with a satisfying crunch, and somehow the blow amplifies Hawke’s spell. The lightning scatters in an explosion of energy that throws the demon to the ground.

Hawke inhales, exhales, and gives her left shoulder a subtle tweak. The pain makes her catch her breath, but nothing seems to be broken. She’ll probably be sporting an impressive bruise, though.

She darts a sideways look at Alistair, who is carefully wiping his sword on the wet grass. There’s a rhythm you fall into when you’re fighting alongside the right allies. Like a dance with a partner, only the consequences of failure are far worse than awkward embarrassment and a sore foot. She’d almost forgotten what it was like. It’s unexpected to find that rhythm with a man she barely even knows. Perhaps she owes him an apology.

Hawke approaches the fallen Warden archer. Blood has pooled beneath her, staining the mud with crimson, but miraculously she is still somehow alive. She crouches down and lays her hands on the unconscious woman, sending a weak flow of mana into her wounds. Her hear constricts with a twinge of grief as she spares a fleeting thought for Anders and his warm, capable hands. Healing had been second nature to him. It’s not a skill she’s ever cultivated beyond the most basic level, and at this point her mana is almost depleted. But she’ll do what she can.

When she’s finished, the wounds have just about scabbed over enough to stop the bleeding. Saving this woman is beyond her abilities, but at least she’s bought her some time. That’s the best she can do at the moment.

The other archer has scrambled over to throw himself at the woman’s side. “Mina!” he cries out hoarsely, clutching at her arm. “Mina!”

Hawke unthinkingly slaps the side of his head. He flinches away and gives her a shocked look. She glares at him, unsympathetic. “Stop that, you idiot. You’ll make it worse.”

The man stares at her, his homely face contorted with grief. Hawke sighs. “She’s alive, for now.”

“On your knees!” a voice behind them barks.

Hawke scrambles to her feet in alarm at the outburst. One of the other Wardens is stumbling towards Alistair, bleeding from a head wound but still clearly determined to fulfill his mission. Alistair has his shield raised, backing away cautiously.

“I don’t want to fight you.”

“Then surrender, traitor!” the man growls, swaying where he stands. He looks like he’s about to faint. Hawke is sorely tempted to push him with a single finger until he topples over into the mud.

Instead she moves to Alistair’s side. He looks at her warningly, and she rolls her eyes at him before turning to face the angry Warden.

“I’d say you have another ten minutes before the rift vomits more demons,” she says in her most affable tone. “And it looks like most of you are a bit the worse for wear. Shall we call it a day? I don’t know about you, but I could definitely use a drink.”

The man stares at her. “This man is a traitor.”

Hawke puts her hands on her hips. “Mina over there just had a demon stick its hand through her chest. I did what I could, but she needs a proper healer.”

“Martem, _please_ ,” the archer interjects, his voice shaking with desperation. “We can’t let Mina die out here.”

The man named Martem screws up his face in frustration. “Don’t think this is the end,” he finally spits out, taking a defeated step backwards. “We _will_ be back for you.”

Alistair manages a tired smile. “Don’t forget the cheese next time, or I won’t open the door.”

***

Without a word, Alistair leads Hawke though the woods. She is soaked and exhausted and freezing. Questions can wait; all she wants at the moment is somewhere dry and warm.

Her shoulder throbs with a dull ache. It’s unfortunate she can’t use her magic to heal herself. Anders had tried to explain the theory to her once before, something about how not being able to refill a bucket using its own water. She was never terribly interested – she cares little for _how_ magic works, she only cares about what it can do. Although she’d never tired of listening to him talk, especially when it was anything to do with magic. His eyes would sparkle with irrepressible excitement, and he’d absentmindedly run his fingers through his gold-streaked hair, making him look even more like a hobo than usual. Hawke smiles sadly to herself at the bittersweet memory.

With a shake of her head she pulls herself back to the present. There is no trail, and all the trees look exactly the same to her, but somehow Alistair is able to find his way until they are at the entrance to a cave. It is surrounded by dense undergrowth. Hawke sees no trace of a road or even a foot path nearby. How he managed to find this cave in the first place is a mystery. Begrudgingly she chalks up another point in his favor. He has gone from “barely one step above an idiot” to “perhaps somewhat competent in certain areas.”

The cave’s entrance is stooped and cramped, but once inside, the tunnel is big enough for both of them to walk side by side. After a few minutes it widens into a more open space. It is dark but for the glowing embers of a dying fire. Alistair quickly crouches down to build it back up again, piling dry logs into a careful pyramid. Hawke waves him away and flicks her fingers at the embers. The wood bursts into flame, filling the space with a rush of welcome heat and light.

“Welcome to my humble home.” Alistair makes a grand gesture with a sweep of his arm.

By the light of the fire Hawke can now see that the cave is not just any old cave. The space is far larger than she’d first thought, the ceiling almost a full league above them. There are signs that this was once a proper dwelling, altered to be more habitable for humans. There are wooden tables and shelves in various corners. Metal netting has been rigged in certain places to keep loose rocks from rolling onto the heads of the unwary. Clay pots have been placed to catch the moisture dripping from the ceiling, presumably to use as drinking water. There is even a crude metal stove with a kettle sitting on top.

Hawke is suddenly aware of how cold and wet she is. She carelessly drops her satchel and staff, pulling up a nearby stool closer to the fire. Then she methodically begins to shed her wet clothes, starting with her cloak. Alistair yelps and turns away when he realizes what she is doing.

“Maker’s breath! A warning would be nice.”

“You want me to warn you that I’m… taking my clothes off?” Hawke says with wry amusement. “I’m not sure whether I should feel flattered or insulted.”

Hawke has stripped herself of her belt and taken a seat to unlace her boots before Alistair speaks again. “Thank you for healing Mina, back there.”

“What? Oh.” She is only half listening, focused on the difficult task of tugging her laces loose – the wet has caused her boots to shrink slightly, tightening the eyelets. “Well, what was I going to do, leave her to bleed out to death in front of me? You must think I’m a right bitch.”

Alistair snorts a little at that. “Not exactly. But you were the one who said we should run away.”

Hawke rolls her eyes, then realizes he can’t see her face. “I didn’t think you Wardens were going to be so shit at fighting demons.”

She hears him sigh. “Well, that’s the problem with becoming a Warden right after the end of a Blight. Not a lot of monsters around to practice on.”

“With all those rifts opening up everywhere, that problem is going to solve itself soon enough.”

Hawke finally wriggles her feet out of her soaked boots with a sigh of relief. Thoughtlessly, she reaches up to unstrap her right pauldron when a sharp twinge in her left shoulder provokes a hiss of pain. Alistair half turns towards her, his eyebrows raised in concern. “Are you injured?”

“It’s just a bruise.” She grits her teeth and manages to undo the buckle without further embarrassing herself.

More slowly, now, she sheds her various layers until she is down to her blouse and trousers. The thin fabric sticks to her skin, unpleasantly clammy. When she looks down, she can see that little is left to the imagination, but she is past caring at this point. And the wet and bedraggled look is hardly what one would call seductive, unless Alistair happens to be attracted to drowned cats.

“You can turn around now. I promise, all my dangerous bits are covered.”

“Haha.” Alistair turns, but one look at her and he hastily looks away again. “Ah, just a moment.”

He walks over to a different corner of the cave and returns with a blanket, which he tosses to Hawke, eyes still averted. “You, um, you look a bit cold.”

Hawke laughs softly to herself as she wraps the blanket around herself. It is scratchy and well-worn, but it is warm and dry and smells oddly comforting. “Thank you, Brother Alistair. I shall endeavor to be more modest in future.”

Alistair lets out a reluctant huff of amusement as he unstraps his sword and shield from his back. He pauses, eyeing Hawke uncertainly until she lets out a dramatic sigh and turns around to stare at the cave wall.

A flutter of tattered fabric catches her attention, and she sees a torn banner hanging from a wooden archway that presumably leads deeper into the cave. On the banner is a painting of a white skull with a slash of red across its eyes. It is spattered with dark stains. Suddenly the cave makes more sense.

“Either you have terrible taste in artwork, or that’s the banner of the Blind Men,” Hawke remarks. “Did you just happen upon an old hideout of theirs? Or was this one occupied when you arrived?”

“There were some inhabitants, yes.” Alistair’s voice is muffled, as if he’s pulling a shirt over his head. “I asked them to leave. Very nicely.”

“I don’t doubt you were quite persuasive.” Hawke smirks. The Blind Men are notorious slave smugglers, and the thought of Alistair “persuading” them to bugger off cheers her up immensely.

“All right,” she continues blithely. “I’m going to turn around now, so I hope you’re decent.”

Alistair has changed into a pair of breeches and a long tunic. While the Chantry probably wouldn’t approve of his bare calves, he is far more decently clad than she is. At the moment he is occupied in spreading their wet clothes to dry on a nearby boulder.

Hawke sits down as close to the fire as she can stand. The heat on her skin is so intense it’s almost painful, but she welcomes the tingling in her fingers and toes as they slowly start to unthaw. She closes her eyes for a moment to savor the feeling of warmth spreading through her, drowsiness starting to creep into her limbs.

“Maybe we should take a look at your injury.” Alistair’s tone is oddly diffident. “I have some herbs for a poultice.”

Hawke opens her eyes and shoots him her best withering look. “Listen, Warden. I don’t know if anyone has told you, but I am the fucking Champion of Kirkwall. I don’t need a bloody poultice for a _bruise_.”

Alistair answers her indignation with a raised eyebrow. “Did I ever tell you the story of the Warden who left a bruise untended and ended up with his entire arm falling off?”

He says this with such a straight face that Hawke can’t help but laugh. “All right, fine. Hopefully the sight of my bare shoulder won’t irrevocably corrupt your virtue.”

“My faith in the Maker is my shield.”

She rolls her eyes and shifts the blanket so her left arm is exposed, then carefully shrugs her shoulder out of her blouse with a wince, tucking the blanket around her armpits so she doesn’t accidentally give him an eyeful of her breasts. Alistair leans over to get a better look. This close, she can smell him: the scent of leather and metal, damp earth and clean sweat. His chin is rough with at least several days’ worth of stubble. In the flickering light, she can see the ruddy highlights in his light brown hair, grown noticeably unrulier since they last saw each other.

Hawke looks down at her shoulder to distract herself from his sudden proximity. She is mildly surprised to see that the flesh is pink and noticeably swollen. Experimentally, she pokes it with her other hand and suppresses a wince. Maybe a poultice wouldn’t be the worst idea.

“Poultice it is, then.” Alistair says with something that seems suspiciously like satisfaction. “If you could see to getting the stove warmed up, I’ll be happy to do the rest.”

Hawke obliges with another fire spell, and soon Alistair has a kettle of water simmering away. She watches as he gathers some dried herbs from the shelves, then grinds them up with a mortar before carefully adding hot water to create a fragrant paste. The Warden is full of hidden talents, apparently. Next he’ll be playing the harp and teaching her an Orlesian waltz.

“Where does a warrior learn to make poultices?”

He chuckles a little as he sits next to her, the bowl of paste in his lap. “Morrigan, the Wicked Witch of the Wilds. Have you heard of her?”

“Vaguely.” Hawke watches him with mild fascination as he takes a bit of paste in his fingers and starts dabbing with surprising gentleness at her tender shoulder. “I know she was one of your companions during the Blight.” A fragment of a half-remembered tale comes to mind. “Is it true she would lure men to her lair, turn into a spider, and eat them alive?”

Her question startles a laugh out of him. “Hah! That’s a new one. It sounds like something she _would_ enjoy. But no, that’s not true.” He pauses for a moment. “As far as I know, anyway.”

A not uncomfortable silence falls between them as Alistair continues to spread the paste on her skin. Hawke watches his capable hands at work and is unable to suppress a vivid memory of Anders in his clinic, doing the exact same thing. She remembers his deft fingers, working to set a broken bone or tying up a bandage for a wound, all with a smile and a jest to make his patient laugh. He had been a skilled spirit healer, certainly, but it had been more than that. He had truly cared for his patients, the poor, downtrodden bastards of Darktown. Kirkwall had long since abandoned those people living in her underbelly, but Anders had still fought for them, even though Kirkwall was only his adopted home. He’d always been adamant that he could make a difference in their lives, even though they were living in the literal shit of the city that had forgotten them.

Yet it was that same empathy that had been his eventual undoing. If he hadn’t cared so much about the pain of others, he never would have allowed Justice to possess his body and invade his mind. And she probably never would have met him. Never would have fallen in love with him. Never would have had to witness the monster he’d become.

“Hawke. Are you all right?”

Hawke blinks, suddenly realizing she’s been staring into space, completely lost in her own thoughts. She blinks her eyes rapidly lest the tears overflow and tries to produce a laugh.

“Sorry.” Her voice rasps against the tightness in her throat. “My mind wandered for a moment.”

She braces herself, sure that he will press the issue, but instead he simply nods and picks up a roll of clean white cloth lying in his lap. “May I?”

Hawke nods. Alistair unfurls the cloth and holds one end against her collarbone while using his other hand to start wrapping it around her wound, guiding it under her armpit and over her shoulder. His eyes are steadfastly fixed on his task, refusing to stray anywhere else even by accident, which Hawke finds charmingly old-fashioned. The warm roughness of his callouses against her bare skin provokes a faint tingle in her belly, which she finds vaguely unsettling. When is the last time she’s been touched another human she’s not been trying to kill? She feels her mouth stretch into a bleak smile at the thought.

Her eyelids feel heavy, like a great weight is pressing down on them. The warm of the fire and the weariness of her body and soul fill her limbs with the promise of comforting oblivion. She closes her eyes, unable to resist its pull.

The abrupt sensation of falling jerks her awake. Suddenly she finds her cheek pressed against Alistair’s chest as he holds her up in his arms. The stool she was sitting on clatters loudly to the floor.

“Are you all right?” he asks carefully.

Hawke awkwardly tries to scramble to her feet, but a flash of pain in her shoulder causes her to curse out loud in frustration. Alistair tightens his hold around her and gently eases her up. Her mind is fuzzy with exhaustion, and the warmth and weight of his strong, steady arms around her sends confusing emotions fluttering in her chest. She quickly gains her balance and steps away from him, trying to shake herself more awake. Dimly she realizes her shoulder is now neatly bandaged, the poultice a comforting heat against her tender skin.

“Sorry.” Hawke laughs a little, feeling the flush of awkwardness in her cheeks even through her exhaustion. She rubs her eyes to avoid meeting Alistair’s gaze. “I must be more tired than I thought.”

“I was wondering why you were trying to fall headfirst into the fire.” He sounds gently amused. “You should get some sleep. We’ll have plenty of time to talk in the morning.”

He puts a hand on her elbow and carefully leads her to a small cot tucked into a corner of the cave. Vaguely, she feels like she should be more worried about sleeping in this cave with a man she barely knows, but she is so tired she can barely see straight. Let him grope her if he wants – at this point she doesn’t care, as long as he does it without waking her. She collapses in an ungraceful heap on her unwounded side, the blanket still wrapped around her like a sloppy cocoon. The last thing she’s aware of is another layer of warmth dropping softly on top of her before she drifts off into a dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Horny_Unicorny for helping me work out the Hawke/Alyne scene!


	5. Secrets Beyond Measure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alistair (the next day): Being a Warden means keeping secrets.

Alistair starts up from a fitful doze. He is perched precariously on a stool next to the fire, now dimmed down to a cozy glow. Yawning, he rubs his eyes and squints at the crude water clock that some former inhabitant created and left behind, using two ceramic pots and the natural moisture dripping from the cave’s ceiling. It must be close to sunrise.

Hawke is still a motionless heap of blankets in the corner. There are other cots and blankets in the cave, but Alistair doesn’t dare allow himself to fall completely asleep with someone else so close at hand. The nightmares have become a regular part of his sleep, and he doesn’t want to have to answer any questions – which no doubt Hawke would ask. So he’s spend the past few hours sitting upright, nodding in and out of consciousness. Hardly a restful night’s sleep, but he’s had worse.

He gets up and stretches, wincing at the stiffness in his muscles. An involuntary shiver runs through him as the chill of the cave raises goosebumps on his skin. Quietly, he shrugs himself into trousers and a woolen tunic over his breeches and undershirt. Then he carefully approaches Hawke’s cot. He doesn’t want to risk startling her awake and getting blasted with a spell. Not a good way to start the day.

She is sleeping with her limbs akimbo, arms flung above her head, one bare leg dangling off the side of the cot. Her pose is so artless that he smiles to himself. Her face is turned towards him, framed by a wildness of black hair. Alistair can’t help but pause, studying her features. Hawke is paler than Solona was, with a slightly bolder nose and fuller lips. When she is awake, her charisma is brash and forceful, the complete opposite of Solona’s soft spoken warmth. But in sleep, the lines of her face seem softer and unguarded, accentuating the familial resemblance. He wonders what Solona would have thought of Hawke if they’d ever had a chance to meet in real life. The two of them are so unalike that it’s difficult to imagine them chatting about shoes and squealing over nugs together. At least, that’s what Solona and Leliana used to do. The idea of Hawke squealing over a nug is so incongruous he swallows a snort of amusement and almost chokes on it.

Abruptly he realizes he’s been staring silently at a sleeping woman for far too long. He’s practically begging to be turned into an icicle if Hawke wakes up.

Alistair hastily turns away and walks over to the stove. The fire Hawke started last night is now just embers, but he blows on it and feeds it some twigs to get it back to a healthy roar. He throws some grains and dried fruit in a pot and adds some water from a barrel. Then he fills a beaten-up kettle with some more water and a handful of herbs collected from the surrounding forest. Hopefully Hawke isn’t expecting a tablecloth and silverware.

By the time breakfast is ready, Hawke is awake and yawning, combing through her tangles with desultory fingers. She waves a casual hand at Alistair as she pulls herself to her feet and starts collecting her clothes from around the fire. “This is your warning.”

“What? Oh.” Alistair quickly turns his back as she drops her blanket and starts getting dressed. He knows his Chantry upbringing has made him a bit on the prudish side, but Maker’s breath, he’s never met a woman so nonchalant about stripping off in front of an almost complete stranger. Well, maybe excepting the ladies in The Pearl in Denerim. Not that Hawke is in any way equivalent to a prostitute. Alistair gives his head a hard shake to clear it of his wandering thoughts. What in the name of Andraste’s flaming sword is wrong with him?

“How is your shoulder?” he quickly asks in a loud voice in an attempt to distract himself.

“Much better, actually. Please pass on my compliments to your man-eating witch, the next time you see her.”

Alistair smiles to himself at the thought of boasting to Morrigan about his success. “She’ll probably say it’s a miracle I didn’t end up poisoning you by accident.”

Once Hawke is dressed, they sit next to the fire and share the pot of oatmeal in a companionable silence. Afterwards he offers her a mug of the herbal tea he’s brewed, which she takes with a grin. “This is all terribly civilized for a smuggler’s cave in the arse end of nowhere.”

“Why, thank you.” He bows his head mockingly. “Not bad for a man raised by dogs, wouldn’t you say?”

Hawke snorts as she takes a sip of her tea. “Taught by witches, raised by dogs… you are just full of surprises, Warden.”

“Speaking of surprises…” Alistair is bursting with questions, so much so that he barely knows where to begin. “What in the Maker’s name are you doing in Crestwood?”

Hawke tilts her head. She’s tied her hair back with a piece of twine, but bits of it refuse to cooperate and fall messily about her face. “Well… it all started when Varric wrote to tell me that Thedas is now suffering from a red lyrium infestation.”

“Maker’s breath.” Alistair feels the blood draining from his face. “Is he certain? How is that even possible?”

“Varric certainly knows how to spin a tale, but this is one thing he would never embellish.” Hawke looks grim, her deep blue eyes reflecting the steady flickering of the flames in front of them. “He’s with the Inquisition now, and apparently they’re trying to investigate, but so far they’ve come up with nothing. So he asked me to see if I could find out anything more. Which reminded me of you, actually.” 

“Me?”

“Don’t be so surprised.” Hawke rolls her eyes. “You’re the one that came to Kirkwall wanting to know more about red lyrium. Maker knows you lot are always yammering on about Warden _business_ like you’re the only thing between the rest of us and the end of the world. What better business to attend to than a bloody magical rock from the Deep Roads that turns people into murderous lunatics?”

Alistair can’t help but laugh in disbelief. “Do I have to remind you – _again_ – that you’re the one who told us to stay _away_ from red lyrium?”

She scoffs. “As if the Wardens would ever listen to my advice.”

Her sheer brazenness is almost admirable. But for all that, she’s not wrong.

“They didn’t, I suppose. But unfortunately that doesn’t mean we found out anything useful. They sent another expedition after mine, but I told them I thought it was a bad idea. Surprise: they didn’t include me on it.” He shrugs. “I don’t know exactly what happened after that, but eventually the investigations were dropped. I assume they failed to find a clear link between the red lyrium and the darkspawn, so then they decided it wasn’t really a Warden concern.”

“Typical.” Hawke mutters, nursing her cup of tea. “So this entire detour into Crestwood has been a bloody waste of time.”

“Well, you did stop me from getting dragged off in chains,” Alistair offers cheerfully. “So not a complete waste of time, I’d like to think.”

Hawke gives him a sideways glance. The frustration in her face eases ever so slightly as her mouth twists in a wry half-smile. “Yes, not a _complete_ waste of time.”

Alistair ignores the implied insult and asks another question that’s been pestering him. “How did you even know I was here?”

“Would you believe I ran into Alyne near Kinloch Hold?” Hawke shakes her head. “She was the one that told me to come to Crestwood.”

“Alyne?” Alistair echoes. If someone had told him all those years ago, when Alyne had been under his command, that she would be the one to defy Clarel and help him commit what basically amounted to treason, he would have thought them completely insane. It is a sobering thought, that a Warden as loyal as she is feels justified in disobeying her Commander. He must find a way to stop her before it is too late for all of them.

But how? He is no closer to finding a solution than he was in the Warden camp. Has he made an error in judgement, turning himself into a fugitive? Should he have tried to stay at Clarel’s side and insinuate himself into her inner circle instead?

He realizes that Hawke is staring at him curiously. She’s just asked him a question that he completely missed hearing. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I said, what have you done to piss off your people?” Hawke repeats with exaggerated patience. “Alyne played a whole game of cloak and dagger just to tell me where you were. It did involve her throwing me against a wall, which she enjoyed far more than she needed to.” She snorts, and Alistair smirks at the mental image. That does sound something like Alyne would enjoy.

“Well? Did you let spill some terrible Warden secret? Use your soup spoon for your sorbet in front of the First Warden?”

Alistair experiences a moment of panic. He knows that Solona – or whatever spirit he saw in the Fade – has urged him to trust Hawke implicitly, but the thought of disobeying a direct order from Leonie does not sit well with him at all. It’s one thing to rebel against Clarel, who is obviously not herself. And he barely knows the woman anyway. But Leonie has been his Commander ever since the end of the Blight, and he has nothing but the deepest respect for her. Disobeying her feels like a hard line in the sand – a line he is very reluctant to cross.

“Funnily enough, I also received a letter from an old friend.” He tries to keep his tone light-hearted, still mentally weighing how much he should tell her and what he should keep to himself. “She told me that the Orlesian Wardens have all disappeared from their regular holdings, and no one knew where they’d gone. Then on the same day, the Warden-Commander of Ferelden received word from Weisshaupt, summoning all Wardens to the fortress.”

Hawke frowns. “I’m assuming this is unusual.”

“Yes.” Alistair replies dryly. “Especially considering our Commander has been trying to contact them for quite some time. They sent no replies to her letters for months… and then suddenly, they want everyone over for tea.”

“So if Weisshaupt has summoned you, then why are you here?” Hawke demands. “As a matter of fact, why are any of you here?”

“Our Commander decided she was going to Weisshaupt alone.” Alistair silently offers up a quick prayer to the Maker that Leonie is safe. “She ordered the other Wardens to stay in Amaranthine. But she asked me to go to Orlais and investigate why the Wardens there had all gone missing.”

“And?”

“I discovered…” Alistair exhales and rubs his forehead. Here is the sticky bit. “I discovered that Clarel, the Warden-Commander in Orlais, has a new advisor – some Tevinter magister named Erimond – who has convinced her that he can use blood magic to end all Blights for good.”

Hawke draws in a breath, her eyes wide with shock. Alistair takes the moment to confirm his decision to himself – he will tell Hawke everything, but not that the Orlesian Wardens are all hearing the Calling. That _he_ is hearing the Calling. Surely, Leonie was right about keeping that a secret. If outsiders knew that so many Wardens were so vulnerable, they would never trust the order again. Despite Solona’s efforts during the Fifth Blight, the memory of Sophia Dryden has not yet faded.

Hawke is still staring at him, and he offers her a grim smile. “Yes, that’s what I said. Which Clarel did not approve of.” He spreads his arms to indicate the cave. “So here I am.”

“How has that madwoman convinced the other Wardens to follow her?” Hawke demands, her voice sharp with disapproval. “Are you saying every single Orlesian Warden supports this? Using _blood magic_? To end all Blights? Have they all gone absolutely insane?”

Alistair feels his hackles rising, but with an effort pushes his emotions back down. Hawke’s anger is fully justified – although slightly surprising; he would have guessed her to have a more forgiving attitude towards blood magic, given her apparent disregard for rules in general. At the moment he almost wishes she were slightly more morally flexible… it would be much more convenient for him. Would she be more understanding if she knew _why_ the Orlesian Wardens were being driven to such desperate measures? She already knows what the Calling is, which is far more than what most outsiders know.

But no. He _can’t_ betray the promise he made Leonie. It may be silly, but he feels it’s the last scrap of sanity he has to cling to. The music haunts him day and night, sometimes overwhelming, sometimes barely a whisper, but it’s always there, scratching at the walls of his mind. His own people are hunting him relentlessly, as a deserter and a traitor. He needs something to remind him that he is still a Grey Warden despite it all.

“Not insane, just desperate,” he says finally. “You know yourself the kind of end that Wardens have to look forward to. Death by eventual insanity. And that’s after a lifetime of battling darkspawn. Really, it’s a mystery why we have so much trouble recruiting.” His jest is edged with bitter sarcasm. “And it’s not like the people of Thedas are falling over themselves with gratitude. Unless there’s a Blight knocking on their doorstep to say hello, they’d rather we stay out of sight for the most part. So maybe you can understand, at least a little bit, why the prospect of ending all Blights for good is a tempting one for any Warden.”

Hawke frowns at his outburst, then glances down at her cup of tea as if she’s just remembered it’s there. She brings it to her mouth and sips thoughtfully. He’s no mind reader, but he thinks he can detect a slight softening of her eyes as she ponders what he’s just said.

“Being a hero is often a thankless task.” She speaks plainly, for once with no trace of arrogance or sarcasm. “They only honor you after you’re dead.”

Alistair recalls Solona’s words in the fade. _Like us, she accepts what she must do because there are no other alternatives in her mind._ Their eyes meet in a rare moment of mutual understanding.

“We don’t do it to be thanked,” he replies with a slight shrug.

“We don’t,” she acknowledges. The frown reappears, creasing her forehead. “Still, blood magic. I would think a Warden-Commander would be made of stronger stuff than to be swayed by such a proposition.”

“Apparently the Tevinter magister is very persuasive.” Alistair grimaces as he remembers Erimond, that slimy toad. He hasn’t felt this much sheer hatred towards anyone since Loghain. He’ll wring that mage’s neck himself before this is all over. “I don’t know what he’s getting out of all this, but I mean to find out.”

“If life has taught me anything, it’s that bad shit happening all at once is rarely a coincidence.” Hawke raises a brow. “It goes without saying that a Tevinter magister hanging around Wardens in Orlais has some sort of hidden agenda. But what if the agenda is not his own? What if he’s just the pawn of a more powerful player?”

“Like Corypheus?”

He blurts it out before he realizes what he’s said. Hawke shoots him an incredulous look, as if he’s just insulted her grandmother.

“Hear me out, Hawke.” He stops her just as she’s opening her mouth, feeling slightly desperate. “It makes sense. We know that he has the power to cloud Wardens’ minds. What else explains the fact that they’ve all suddenly decided a Tevinter blood magic ritual is a good idea? And who else has a stronger motivation to destroy the Grey Wardens than a darkspawn?”

Hawke’s eyes are the darkness of the sea just before a storm. “Andraste’s flaming tits. You’re serious.”

“Of course I am!” His hears his own voice, loud with frustration, and pauses for a moment to let out a breath. He won’t convince her with shouting. “Unless you think there’s some other plausible reason the Wardens have all gone mad.”

Her mouth is tight with anger, but when she speaks, her words are carefully measured. “I understand this is a personal matter for you, Warden. But this wouldn’t be the first time a group of people made a stupid, short-sighted decision in some misguided attempt to find the easy way out. Simple human weakness is a far more likely explanation than a darkspawn that we know is _dead_.”

Alistair squeezes his eyes shut with a grimace. Again, the temptation to tell her about the Calling presents itself. A mass Calling that only affects Orlesian Wardens, combined with the timing of Erimond’s appearance, should certainly be enough proof for even someone as stubborn as her. Shouldn’t it? It’s hard to think through the echoes of the Calling, ebbing and flowing in and out of his thoughts like a sinister, malingering tide.

No. He will _not_ betray yet another Warden secret to a complete outsider. There’s no guarantee it would change her mind anyway. Hawke is simply being blinded by her own arrogance, her own misguided certainty that she would never make such a terrible mistake.

“Did you ever find any _proof_ that Corypheus is still alive?” Hawke demands, clearly impatient with his prolonged silence.

Alistair opens his eyes. “No.”

“And do you have any proof that this Tevinter magister even knows who Corypheus was?”

“Yes, I suppose I should have just asked him outright.” Alistair is unable to keep the sarcasm out of his voice. “’Hello, nice to meet you! I think we might have a mutual acquaintance actually! Have you ever heard of a fellow named Corypheus? He’s from Tevinter, too – I know all of you evil insane magisters go to each other’s birthday parties.’”

He sees the corner of Hawke’s mouth twitch in reluctant amusement. “You’re a funny man, Warden Alistair, but that still doesn’t mean you’re right.”

“At least you think I’m funny.” Alistair deadpans, but he refuses to be sidetracked from his argument. “Is it that hard to imagine a Tevinter magister in the service of a powerful darkspawn? You know firsthand that Corypheus isn’t just a drooling beast like the other darkspawn. He’s intelligent. And ambitious. He probably promised Erimond the usual things: power, riches, a pony – I don’t know. But it _makes sense._ ”

“It only makes sense if you think there’s a possibility that Corypheus is still alive.” Hawke snaps back. “So far you have produced exactly no proof of your ridiculous theory. You Wardens fucked up in trying to defeat the world’s oldest darkspawn because of your arrogance, and you won’t admit it. Now, you’re all about to stab each other for the sake of some mysterious Tevinter blood magic ritual, and you’re still trying to make it someone else’s fault!”

Alistair’s fists clench of their own accord. “Why won’t you even _consider_ the possibility that Corypheus could have somehow fooled you? Is there anything I’ve said that you have an actual argument against, rather than just pouting about it like a spoiled child?”

“You want me to _reason_ with your Fade-touched logic? Fine.” Hawke jumps to her feet and jabs the air between them with a pointed finger. “You are talking about _hundreds_ of Wardens over the entire empire of Orlais. If Corypheus had _that_ kind of power, he would have used it already! Why would he have waited all this time?”

She actually has a point, but he is too much in the grips of righteous fury to concede it. “Perhaps he was weakened when you defeated him. It could have taken him all these years to regain his strength.”

“Yes, it would take quite some time to recover from being turned into ice and then shattered into pieces.”

“You are completely missing the point. If he has the ability to cheat death, then you could have chopped him into bits and put him a stew and it wouldn’t have done any good.” Alistair finds he is also on his feet, propelled by the force of his angry frustration. “Do you have a better explanation for why the Orlesian Wardens have all gone mad?”

“Yes, I do, actually, and I’ve already explained it to you.” Hawke rolls her eyes. “Desperate people turn to blood magic all the time, without the aid of a mind-controlling darkspawn. Your people have been blinded by the false hope that there’s an easy way out of their battle with the Blight. It’s a tragic story but not an uncommon one.”

Alistair grits his teeth. “The Grey Wardens aren’t perfect. But they have stood against the darkspawn for centuries. Are you seriously saying that every single Warden in Orlais is a spineless coward?”

“No, I’m not, and actually you’ve just made my point for me.”

He blinks at her, nonplussed. “What?”

“If Corypheus has somehow miraculously risen from the dead and is mentally manipulating all the Wardens in Orlais into thinking that blood magic is a good idea, how do you explain Alyne? Or yourself, for that matter?”

Alistair finds himself at a loss for words. He should have taken more time to think his arguments through before confronting Hawke like this. That’s the problem with lying – you always get tangled up in your own web. And Hawke is no fool.

“You and Alyne are both Wardens. So shouldn’t the two of you _also_ be fully endorsing this insane plan to use blood magic to end the Blights?” Hawke crosses her arms and arches a brow. “ _You_ clearly aren’t, and Alyne is obviously conflicted about the whole thing. So how does your clever theory explain _that_?”

Alistair draws in a slow breath and closes his eyes. In that moment of silence, the Calling suddenly surges in his ears, going from an almost inaudible murmur to a swelling chorus of multitudes. He finds himself jerking his head, as if trying to shake off a fly buzzing in his ear. This is it. He must either tell Hawke the truth or resign himself to the fact that she will not help him in his quest to save the other Wardens from their own destruction.

He offers up a silent apology to Solona. Despite her advice, he must walk this path alone after all.

Hawke takes his silence as him conceding her point. She lets out a breath, her anger softening ever so slightly. “I’m sorry, Warden. But the Orlesian Wardens aren’t under the thrall of a darkspawn. They are simply fools allowing themselves to be led by an equally foolish Commander who is in turn letting her own fears lead all of them into ruin. Not everyone has the strength of mind you do.”

“You have no right to judge, Hawke.” Alistair suddenly finds himself angry again, even though he’s already told himself he’s given up on convincing Hawke of anything. He is almost looming over her, so she has to tilt her head to look up at him. But she does so defiantly, practically daring him to do something stupid. Her refusal to back down does nothing to calm his rising temper.

“Grey Wardens give up _everything_ in their fight against the darkspawn. What do _you_ know of sacrificing yourself for the greater good?”

She flinches away as if he’s physically struck her, but the ugly words spill out of him in a cathartic rush. “Your own lover was a Warden deserter who ended up burning down half of Kirkwall! The city that named you its Champion, and then in its hour of greatest need, you just _leave_.” The fury in his voice turns cruelly mocking, but he finds himself unable to stop. “‘So sorry, got to run, will write you soon!’ And now you won’t even entertain the possibility you might have made another mistake, because of… what? Your own selfish vanity? Your empty pride? How many more people will you let die because you’re too pigheaded to admit when you’re wrong?”

“ _Shut up!_ ”

Hawke screams, her rage exploding in a burst of uncontrolled magic that ripples through the air and hits him like a hard slap in the face. Alistair grunts in surprise, but the next minute he finds himself reaching out and grabbing her by her upper arms, fingers digging into her flesh, his head filled with the fog of anger and the ringing of the Calling. Without thought he draws in a deep breath and mentally _pushes_ outward. He’s always visualized it as a blast of clear, cold wind, sweeping away everything in its wake and leaving only emptiness.

Hawke cries out. Her magic is cut off so abruptly that her knees buckle, so that the only thing holding her up is his grip. She stares at him, and the fear and loathing in her face hits him harder than her magic did. “You _are_ a fucking Templar!”

“No!” He immediately lets her go, and she staggers back a few steps. “I swear by Andraste’s sword, I am not a Templar.” She is clutching her shoulder, and belatedly he remembers her wound from the day before. He takes a step back, shame flooding his face. “I trained as one, a long time ago. Before I was a Warden. That’s all.”

Hawke presses her hands to her temples and takes in a shaking breath. “Well. I suppose I deserved that, anyway,” she mutters sullenly. “I… apologize.”

“As do I,” Alistair murmurs. His own words are still ringing in his hears, making him inwardly cringe. The music of the Calling floats insidiously through his thoughts. For a heartbeat he has the insane urge to grab the nearest dagger and stab both his ears, as if that would somehow silence the unearthly demon song within him. He can’t remember the last time he’s had more than a few hours of unbroken sleep, and the exhaustion claws at the walls he’s erected in his mind in a desperate attempt to preserve his sanity. How much longer can he endure this?

“I’m leaving now.” Hawke speaks briskly, picking up her cloak and satchel. “This conversation is a waste of time.”

“Hawke. Wait.” Alistair steps towards her again, then stops, unsure what he wants to say. Hawke is already half turned away, but she pauses, not quite looking at him.

“I know you don’t believe me.” The anger has drained out of him, leaving him feeling empty and exhausted. “I know I have no proof for you right now. But sometimes you just have to listen to your instincts. And my instincts tell me I’m right.” He clenches his fists, willing her to listen. “I’ve been battling darkspawn for most of my life, and my… my _gut_ is telling me that Corypheus is still alive. Isn’t that worth something?”

It is a last-ditch attempt on his part, and he knows it is a pathetic one. But he has to try. Hawke is silent for several moments, her eyes lowered. Then she gives a quick shake of her head.

“I saw him die, Warden. I heard him shatter. I felt the fragments of his body crush under my own two feet. If I have to weigh your _gut_ against my own senses, then I’m going to trust what I know for certain. It’s as simple as that.”

“I see. Well then…” A quiet breath escapes him. What else can he do? “You are not a Warden, and Maker knows, you owe us nothing. But all I ask is that you keep an open mind. And… if you discover anything that can help me help the Wardens, I’m begging you to send word. Please.”

Hawke silently slings her satchel over her head and secures the cloak around her shoulders. Then she turns and looks at Alistair. For a moment he sees double, Solona’s features imposed on her face. But Solona’s face was always an open book to him. Hawke’s eyes are like two polished sapphires, dark and cold and impenetrable.

“I won’t make any promises I might not be able to keep.”

She turns on her heel and stalks her way towards the exit. At the threshold, she pauses without turning around and speaks to the air in front of her. “Maker watch over you, Alistair.”

He watches her disappear into the darkness, then sits back down on the stool next to the fire and rests his head in his hands. He is left alone once more, with nothing but the inexorable music of the Calling for company, and the path before him is shrouded in shadow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I found this chapter very difficult to write, but I wanted to challenge myself to stick to canon. In DAI, when Alistair tells the Inquisitor that the Orlesian Wardens are all hearing the calling, Hawke remarks that this is the first she's hearing of it. That really never made sense to me - why wouldn't Alistair tell his closest ally (at the time) such an important fact? So this chapter was an attempt to find a way to justify this odd decision of his.
> 
> Thanks again to Horny_Unicorny for helping me polish the rough edges!


	6. In Your Heart Shall Burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke (a few weeks later): Will she never be free of her past?

Halamshiral is an odd city. At the very center stands the Winter Palace, gleaming white and blue and gold in the late afternoon sun. Hawke knows that it is supposed to be one of the marvels of Orlesian architecture, but to her eyes it looks ostentatiously ornate. too full of itself to be truly beautiful. She much prefers the blunt stonework of the castles in Ferelden. The Orlesians would no doubt disdain them as crude, but to her the rougher lines seem more honest, somehow. The sharp, polished corners and precise curves of the Winter Palace seem especially incongruous in contrast to the rest of the city that sprawls in its shadow: a collection of crowded, ordinary buildings that bustle with the chaos of ordinary city life, being pointedly ignored by the towering mass of marble that dominates the skyline.

There is one thing about the skyline she finds pleasing at the moment, though it has nothing to do with Halamshiral: the absence of the Breach. It’s been a few weeks since it disappeared, as suddenly as it opened. But while most people are celebrating the apparent return to normalcy, Hawke knows in her gut that their relief is premature. The smaller rifts haven’t disappeared, for one. Demons still roam the countryside, terrorizing anyone unlucky enough to get in their way. And the red lyrium is still abundant. She’s done her best to destroy any clusters she’s run into, but it’s a hopeless task – the crystals have become too rampant, and for every node she destroys, she knows there are plenty she’s missed.

Still, the closing of the Breach is a significant victory. Hawke is itching to get her fingers on Varric’s latest correspondence, which is why she’s in Halamshiral – the contact point he informed her of in his last letter.

She’s never seen so many elves in one place. The Kirkwall alienage had been cramped and claustrophobic, and the elves there had always seemed uneasy, forever looking over their shoulders expecting to see trouble. Here, the elves are by far the majority, and they walk the streets with the casual indifference of those who know they are in their own territory. Hawke wonders what Merrill would make of it all.

After a few inquiries she manages to find her way to what seems to be the city’s main tavern – La Criniere du Lion. It is a far cry from The Hanged Man in Kirkwall – her shoes don’t stick to the floor, the air doesn’t smell of piss, and the general atmosphere is less of stale despair and more of indolent apathy. The bartender is an elf, a man with close-cropped hair and faded vallaslin covering most of his weathered face. Hawke idly wonders what his story is – it’s rare to see city elves with the traditional facial markings – but she doubts the man would take kindly to being asked.

“Excuse me,” she says, carefully polite. “Do you have any letters addressed to… um, a bird of some sort?”

The man eyes her with skepticism, then reaches under the counter and pulls out an envelope with the word “Turtledove” scrawled in an elegant hand. Varric’s idea of a joke; how very amusing. She orders a glass of wine, leaves a generous tip, and takes her drink and her letter to the far corner of the bar where she won’t be disturbed.

The envelope holds two sheets of paper, the first one filled with Varric’s neat handwriting cramped into narrow, orderly lines. The second one is a hand-drawn map. She puts that one aside for the moment and focuses on the letter. Taking a sip of her wine, she begins to read.

_Hawke,_

_Shit, I don’t even know where to begin. As a professional storyteller I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think I’d better tell you the conclusion first._

_Corypheus is back._

The paper crinkles as Hawke’s hands convulse. She stares at the three words, her eyes straining in disbelief, reading them over and over again until they feel seared into her mind.

After an eternity, she realizes she’s been holding her breath, and takes in a dizzying rush of air. Then she forces herself to move on.

_So that’s out of the way. Now for the rest of the epic tale._

_The Inquisition pulled a miracle out of our collective asses and sealed the Breach. We had to recruit the rebel mages from Redcliffe, which apparently involved a wild detour into some bizarre future where Ferelden was being ruled by some crazy Tevinter cult called the Venatori. I don’t know, I wasn’t there. I mean, the Herald said I was there, but it was a future me that had been poisoned with red lyrium. Even just writing that out gives me the creeps._

_Anyway, so everyone in Haven was celebrating and getting drunk, and then out of nowhere Haven gets swarmed with a Templar army in the middle of the night. But these weren’t normal Templars. I mean, normal Templars are bad enough, but these Templars were literally the stuff of nightmares. We’re still not sure, but we think they’ve been_ eating _red lyrium. The crystals were growing out of their bodies. Never seen anything like it. Even Meredith still looked human until right at the end. You’ll never guess who was leading them: Samson, our old buddy from Kirkwall. The Templar who got kicked out of the order, but then you convinced Curly to give him another chance. Remember him? He actually looked in far better shape than when we last saw him, although I guess that’s a pretty low bar. No rocks sprouting from his head, anyway. And at their head was our favorite ancient darkspawn, Corypheus. He looked as good as new – no one would ever have guessed that you’d turned him into an icicle and shattered him into tiny pieces._

_My first thought was he wanted revenge, but he barely even looked at me. Turns out what he wanted was the Anchor – the green hole in the Herald’s hand, the thing that lets her close the rifts. No one really knows how she got it, but old Cory is pretty pissed that she has it. Unfortunately for him, the Anchor isn’t exactly something she can just hand off (sorry) to someone else. His forces burned Haven to the ground, but most of us escaped – thanks to the Herald. She stayed behind to bury them all in an avalanche of snow that she set off with our last remaining trebuchet and managed to trek halfway across the Frostbacks to catch up with us. All in a day’s work for a hero, I guess._

_I’m going to skip over the boring parts where we wandered around and froze our asses off for a few weeks before making it to Skyhold. What is Skyhold, you ask? It’s a gigantic ancient fortress in the middle of the Frostbacks, left abandoned for Maker only knows how long. Not sure how the Herald knew about it. Maybe the Maker showed her in a dream – that would make as much sense as all the other shit that’s happened so far. From a distance, it’s pretty imposing. Close up, it’s falling apart and full of rats. But we’re settled here now, and it’s cleaning up nicely. And the Herald has formally been declared the Inquisitor. It’s all getting a little too militant for my taste, but I’m up to it in my neck at this point. Too late to back out now._

_I’m sorry, Hawke. I thought long and hard before writing this letter. You know I’ve done my best to keep you out of this mess. But… Corypheus. Who could have predicted_ that _? It’s a twist that’s almost too ludicrous to put into a story. But it was him, Hawke. I swear on all my ancestors. I don’t know how the son of a nug survived you killing him, but it was him. I thought you’d rather hear it from me than from someone else. Knowing you, you’re going to start beating yourself up about this whole thing before you’re even finished reading this letter. Don’t do it, Hawke. No one could have known. We were all there with you – we all saw him die. Even that crazy Warden, Larius, thought he was dead. Maker only knows how he managed to survive, but here we are. But we killed him once, and we can do it again. This time, we’ll have an entire Inquisition to back us up. We’ll make sure he stays dead._

_I’ve enclosed a map to help you find your way to Skyhold. Could you try and sneak in through the back door? If the Seeker sees you, she’s going to do far worse than tweak my nipples._

_Apologies,_

_Varric_

Hawke gently puts the letter down, picks up her glass, and empties it down her throat in one go. The wine sloshes around in her stomach, as if the disbelief and shock within her is a physical churning in her gut, and for a brief moment she thinks she’s going to be sick. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath.

A minute or an hour later, she opens her eyes and picks up the map. It details a path cutting through the Frostbacks, from Orlais to Ferelden, and Skyhold right on the border between the two, tucked away amidst the snowy mountain peaks. It would only take her a few days to get there on horseback.

But first, she owes someone an apology.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter... the next Hawke chapter will be much longer, I promise.


	7. The Light in the Shadow

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alistair (a few days later): The shadow still looms, but for the first time, there is light, too.

Alistair is jerked awake from a shallow sleep. He is upright before he is even fully awake, his senses still caught in a haze of exhaustion. Then he hears the approaching footsteps, echoing through the corridor leading into the cave.

Quickly he grabs his sword and strides towards the entrance, steeling himself for the inevitable. Killing another Warden is the last thing he wants to do, but he can’t allow himself to be taken. Not yet. Maker forgive him, he will do what he must. His work is not yet done, and so much is at stake.

The footsteps stop. Alistair adjusts the grip on his hilt.

“It’s Hawke.”

He freezes, confused. The Calling floats through the silence, and he gives his head a shake, vainly trying to shake off the persistent humming in his head. “Hawke?”

“Yes.” He can hear her sigh through the door. “The one and only.”

He opens the door cautiously, sword still at the ready, wondering if this is some sort of bizarre trick. But no, it is Hawke, standing patiently on the other side. Even in the poor light he is struck by shadows under her eyes, the uncharacteristically somber downturn of her mouth.

The ghost of a smile does flicker across her face as she meets his gaze. “Thank you for not stabbing me on sight.”

“Stabbing visitors is rude. The dogs did teach me some manners.”

He stands aside, allowing her to enter. With his left hand he surreptitiously rubs at his bleary eyes, his brain not quite fully awake but trying to process a series of mixed emotions. There is still some simmering resentment at the memory of their last parting, but his overwhelming feeling is that of curiosity – and oddly enough, concern. The brash charisma he has come to expect from her is strangely absent, like a fire that’s been suddenly extinguished. He is bursting with questions, but he bites his tongue and waits for her to speak. This is clearly not a social call.

Hawke stands next to the fire, staring into it blankly. As Alistair puts his sword down and approaches, her mouth twists into a grimace. “Well, Warden. You were right and I was wrong.”

Alistair shoots her a sideways glance. “Well, I’d be more than happy to gloat, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Corypheus.”

She turns to him and meets his startled gaze, her eyes dark and haunted in her pale face. “Corypheus,” she says again, as if she thought he hadn’t heard her. “He’s alive.”

Alistair stares at her in dumbfounded silence. He doesn’t know why he’s so shocked. He _should_ feel vindicated, and possibly even smug, but to hear Hawke say it out loud is so unexpected that he has to fight off a wave of disbelief.

“Are you sure?”

The inanity of his question strikes him even as he is asking it. Hawke looks at him incredulously, as if he’s just babbled to her in unknown tongues.

“ _Am I sure?_ ” Her voice is tremulous with the beginnings of hysterical laughter. Then she throws her head back, mirth bubbling from her until she is cackling maniacally at the ceiling. Alistair watches her, alarmed, but her amusement dies down as quickly as it erupted, the echoes of her outburst bouncing eerily off the cavern walls.

“Yes, Warden, I’m fucking sure that pox-faced spawn of a Tevinter whore is alive.” Her vicious language is an odd contrast to her perfectly even tone of voice. She digs into her satchel and fishes out a crumpled letter, which she thrusts at Alistair impatiently.

He scans it quickly, his heartbeat thudding in his ears. When he finishes, he looks up to see Hawke staring at him so intently that he almost takes a step back. “Well?” she demands.

“Er…” He clears his throat, instinctively falling back on humor in the hopes of defusing her volatile mood. “So does this mean I get to say _I told you so_?”

Hawke laughs again, a sharp and humorless bark. She drops down on the nearest stool and presses the heels of her hands to her eyes. “Maker’s shriveled nutsack,” she groans. “What a fucking mess I’ve made of things.”

Alistair involuntarily winces at her profanity, then carefully pulls up a stool to sit beside her, still holding the letter in one hand. Her dark hair is an unkempt tangle, messily tied back from her face. Her mouth is creased into a tight frown. The sharpness of her cheekbones makes him wonder when she’s last eaten.

He is vaguely surprised by his own reaction – shouldn’t he be feeling slightly more pleased by the fact that Hawke is having to choke down this large slice of humble pie? She had, after all, been an unbelievable _ass_ the last time they’d exchanged words on the subject. Pigheaded stubbornness would be a polite way of putting it. But now, seeing her like this is actually making him feel… _guilty_. After all, hasn’t he been equally pigheaded? If he’d just come clean to her about the Calling from the beginning, they both could have saved a lot of grief. Yes, Leonie had tasked him with keeping it secret from outsiders, but the Warden-Commander had also assumed that Clarel would be willing to listen to Alistair and stop whatever madness she’d been planning. When Alistair had made the decision to turn fugitive, he’d already deviated from the mission that Leonie had tasked him with. It had been stupid of him to cling to her order as an excuse not to share this crucial bit of information with Hawke. He realizes, now, that it had been a cowardly way of avoiding a difficult decision.

Well, he no longer has the luxury of passively deferring leadership to another, as he has done for so much of his life. He must take the initiative in this quest to save the Grey Wardens from this madness, or soon there will no longer be an Order to save.

“Has my utter incompetence rendered you speechless?” Hawke’s bitter sarcasm pulls him out of his thoughts. She is leaning forward, elbows braced on her knees, hands balled into fists, staring into the fire as if she means to hurl herself into the flames. “I don’t blame you, really. Corypheus being alive is just one more item to add to my list of royal fuck-ups. As if the death of my entire family, the destruction of Kirkwall, and the Mage-Templar War wasn’t a long enough list.”

“Hawke.” Alistair reaches out, hesitantly, and puts one hand over her clenched fists. She stares down at it but doesn’t speak. “Last I heard, Kirkwall was still standing. And I don’t mean to diminish your accomplishments, but it’s a _little_ arrogant of you to take credit for the entire Mage Templar War, you know. Templars and mages have been itching for a good excuse to stab each other and set each other on fire for forever.”

Hawke looks up at him. The angst in her eyes causes him to swallow against an unexpected tightness in his throat. For the first time, he is not reminded of Solona, but of himself. The guilt and grief etched into her features is as achingly familiar as his own reflection. He knows the weight of blame that never quite goes away, the unshakeable conviction that you could have done things differently, somehow. The shadows lurking in your soul that no light can ever flush out.

“So are you saying my selfish vanity and empty pride are only partly to blame?” Hawke finally queries, and even though her voice is subdued, her words are edged with unmistakable irony.

Alistair winces at hearing the ugliness of his own words being thrown back at him. “Yes. Also, I can be an ass sometimes.”

Hawke looks at him. One corner of her mouth quirks up briefly. “Well, then. That makes two of us.”

“I actually have something I need to tell you.” Alistair finds himself saying, pulling his hand back and steeling himself for her anger. And she _will_ be angry, no doubt, but he needs to do this. “Please promise me you won’t set me on fire.”

Hawke’s lips twitch again. “I won’t make promise I can’t keep.”

He hastily stumbles through the crucial part of his story that he’d previously omitted – about how Stroud discovered the mysterious Calling in the first place and how it is only affecting the Wardens in Orlais. The growing realization on Hawke’s face makes Alistair look away, even as he’s speaking. The more he thinks about it, the more his insistence on keeping this a secret from her seems ridiculous in hindsight. It had seemed the right thing to do at the time. Surely having darkspawn voices singing in his head day and night is something of an extenuating circumstance. Though he’s not sure if Hawke will see it that way.

As he finishes his story, he inwardly winces as she opens her mouth, her brows furrowed into a frown.

“So you’ve been hearing the Calling… all this time?”

“Yes.” Alistair admits. Her tone is that of utter disbelief, presumably at his idiocy. “I started hearing it as soon as I approached the border with Orlais. And when I found Clarel and her Wardens, it was immediately obvious that they were hearing it, too. That’s when I was certain it had to be Corypheus.”

She is staring at him with an unreadable expression in her deep blue eyes. “Maker’s breath. And people call _me_ stubborn. Would it really have killed you to just fucking _tell_ me the last time we discussed this?”

Alistair takes in a deep breath, exhales it loudly. “At the time… yes, I thought it _would_ kill me. Not literally, obviously.” Hawke is still looking at him with that unblinking stare, so he blunders on with his rambling explanation.

“The Grey Wardens are the only family I’ve ever known. When I found out that Clarel meant to have me arrested and branded a traitor… I knew that running away was the right thing to do. But to be hunted by my own people…” He swallows. “You can’t know what the past months have been like. Having to fight my fellow Wardens, knowing that they think me a coward and a deserter. All with this accursed Calling in my ears, day and night. You’d think even the Archdemon would take a break for tea or something, at some point.” His muted laughter rings hollow in his ears. “I suppose I thought… disobeying Leonie would be the last straw. It was the only thing I had to cling to, to remind me that I _wasn’t_ a deserter or a traitor, that I am still a Grey Warden despite… well, everything.”

Alistair trails off and turns his head away from Hawke’s steady gaze, suddenly feeling small and foolish despite his earlier resolve. But then he feels her take his hand in her own, and he glances back at her, surprised at this gesture.

“Your stubborn determination to be a complete ass, whether it kills you or not, makes you very much a Grey Warden, I’m afraid.”

Hawke’s seemingly harsh words are followed by a smile that catches him completely off-guard. Always, she has looked at him with varying degrees of wariness, contempt, and skepticism, but now her smile transforms her face, softening the sharp edges and filling her eyes with a warmth that reminds him of sunlight dancing on the ocean waves. It is a side of Hawke he has never seen before, stripped of her usual bold and arrogant cheek, sincere and oddly vulnerable.

He suddenly becomes aware he’s been staring at her in complete silence. It seems she’s realized the same; she quickly pulls her hand away with a laugh and leaps to her feet, suddenly back to her old self in the blink of an eye.

“Well, now that we’ve both established what idiots we’ve been…” She plants her hands on her hips, all business. “Clearly there is a link here, between Corypheus’s reappearance and the Orlesian Wardens all hearing the Calling. The question is – what is it? Is he just trying to get rid of all of you so you can’t interfere with his plotting?”

“It’s not a very effective plan, if that is his goal.” Alistair muses. “The Calling isn’t an instant death sentence. The Wardens have been hearing it for months, now. Yes, eventually it will drive them insane, but there’s no guarantee _when._ Either our ancient Tevinter magister is dumber than we thought, or he has another plan we don’t know about yet.”

Hawke snorts. “He isn’t stupid, whatever else he may be.” She reaches out to snatch the letter from his hand – he’d actually forgotten he’s still holding it – and scans it for some specific detail. Then she waves the paper at him.

“Varric mentions some kind of Tevinter cult in his letter, a cult connected to Corypheus. What are the odds that your Commander’s new best friend is a…?” She skims the letter again. “A _Venatori_?”

“An evil Tevinter cult seems redundant on several levels.”

Hawke laughs. “Not to mention a terrible cliché. Who knew the darkspawn had such a flair for the dramatic?”

Alistair finds himself grinning in reply, absurdly pleased she’s found his jest so amusing. “All those centuries in prison gave him plenty of time to plan his grand debut back into high society.”

“Speaking of high society.” Hawke rolls her eyes and gestures with the letter. “I’m afraid all of this means I’ll have to pay the Inquisition a visit.” She sighs. “That Seeker of theirs has been sniffing after me ever since I left Kirkwall. And now I’m just going to walk into their stronghold. I’m sure Varric is beside himself with the irony of it all. Irony makes for the best stories, apparently.”

“Are you sure that’s wise?” Alistair gets to his feet, frowning with growing concern. As a former Templar, he knows firsthand that the Chantry may preach mercy and forgiveness for sinners from the rooftops, but oftentimes that comes after said sinner has been thoroughly… chastised. And the chastisement rarely stops with a stern talking-to.

Hawke shrugs flippantly. “I’ve been accused of many things, but wise has never been one of them.”

“Hawke. I’m serious.” Alistair refuses to be distracted. “The Chantry has a long memory, and one of their favorite past times is to make public examples of misbehaving boys and girls. And at the risk of being rude, I have to point out that you have been extremely misbehaved. They probably have a picture of you in their textbook of misbehavior they use to train their new recruits.”

“Flatterer.” Hawke deadpans, and against his will Alistair has to chuckle. She smirks at his reluctant amusement.

“I think the Seeker that’s been keeping Varric on a short leash is actually a bit of an admirer of mine.” Hawke goes on to explain cheerfully. “And at any rate, I would trust Varric with my life. He would never ask me to come if he thought there was still any danger of the Chantry twisting my toes.”

Alistair is still not sure he’s convinced, but then Hawke looks him in the eye, and now there is no more mirth, no more glib retorts. It is the face, he thinks, of the Champion of Kirkwall; determined and resolute. There is no doubt she is a beautiful woman, with her unfathomable blue eyes and charmingly brazen smile, but she is no less intimidating for all that.

“This is my responsibility.” There is no hubris, just a simple statement of fact. “Not that you Wardens haven’t fucked things up along the way as well. But I can’t ignore the part I played. So I’m going to Skyhold. And I think you should, too.”

“Me?” Alistair blurts out, taken aback by this sudden suggestion. “Why me? No one asked for me.”

“Because no one knows about you, you idiot.” Hawke retorts. “The Inquisition is probably our best chance at figuring out this Void-forsaken mess. Look at the two of us.” She gestures between them. “One fugitive Warden and one has-been Champion. It’s bloody ridiculous to think we’re going to achieve anything on our own against a resurrected darkspawn magister who apparently has an entire Tevinter cult warming his backside. Not to mention the Wardens and their fucking blood magic ritual that’s all likely being led by this damned cult. The Inquisition has resources and people, both of which we’ll need if we’re going to put an end to all of this and save your Wardens from self-destruction.”

Alistair hesitates. What Hawke says is all true. It’s unrealistic to think that he and Hawke have any chance of victory on their own. But again, the thought of involving outsiders in Grey Warden affairs goes against everything the Wardens believe in. Hawke is just one person, and someone he knows and trusts. He knows nothing about the Inquisition and its leaders. What if they decide that the Grey Wardens are purposefully colluding with Corypheus? What if the Inquisition deems the Grey Wardens beyond saving?

“Alistair.”

He looks at her, startled. In all the time he has known her, he can’t remember Hawke ever addressing him by his actual name before.

“You know what is at stake here.” She holds his gaze, and he can’t look away. “Corypheus isn’t just some overpowered darkspawn with delusions of grandeur. He is _the_ darkspawn, one of the _first_ bloody bastards who breached the Golden City. And he means to destroy us all. You Grey Wardens are always yammering on about duty and sacrifice. Isn’t a situation like this exactly what your lot had in mind when you wrote those vows? To protect the world from darkspawn, no matter what the cost?”

Alistair bristles at the insinuation, and he snaps at her before he realizes what he is doing. “What do _you_ know about the duty of a Grey Warden?”

She is steadfast in the face of his hostility, and for a heartbeat he sees Solona looking at him through Hawke’s eyes. “Am I wrong?”

At that, his shoulders slump, and he feels the heat of shame on his face. As a Grey Warden, he has always been prepared – and willing – to give his own life in the fight against the Blight. But it seems that is not enough. The Blight took from him the woman he loved, and now he is being asked to sacrifice his fellow Wardens so that the rest of the world might live. It hardly seems fair.

But that is a stupidly naïve thought. The world has never been fair, and he knows that pouting about it won’t change a thing. No time to wade in existential angst when the world is in need of saving. Again.

“You’re not wrong.” He allows him a deep sigh of resignation, then straightens and squares his shoulders. “Fine. You’re right. We need the help of this Inquisition and their grand leader, Her Most Gloriousness or whatever they’ve decided to call her.”

Hawke chuckles at his irreverence. “I think she’s the Inquisitor now.”

“How humble of her.” Alistair snorts. “Are you sure it’s safe for you to go to Skyhold, then? You’re not worried about being _Inquisitized_ by the Chantry there?”

“Last I heard, the Chantry hasn’t officially acknowledged the Herald or the new Inquisition.” Hawke shrugs, infuriatingly nonchalant about the possibility of being taken into custody by a religious institution not exactly known for its mercy. “And as I told you, I trust Varric with my life. So I’m going. Are you still refusing to come with me?”

“If we’re going to be any help to the Inquisition, we need more information.” Alistair counters. “There are still Wardens in Crestwood, though not as many as before. Most of them have left. We need to know where they are gathering. Clarel mentioned the Western Approach, but that’s not specific enough to be useful. This blood magic ritual… if Erimond is working for Corypheus, then the ritual most likely is going to benefit him in some way. We need to stop it before it happens.”

“So what are you going to do? Invite the remaining Wardens over for dinner?” Hawke asks with exaggerated politeness. “Have a friendly natter over tea?”

“I’m going to use the old-fashioned method, known as sneaking around.” Alistair replies with dignity. “The Wardens don’t stay in the village, and they move around every few days, but I don’t think it’s going to be too hard to find their camp.”

Hawke looks him over dubiously, clearly doubting his sneaking capabilities. “I hope you’re not going to try doing that wearing all your chainmail.”

“Why not?” He blinks at her innocently. “I thought I’d tie bells around my ankles just to make it extra challenging.”

She makes a face at him. “Fine, have it your way. But you’d better bloody be here when I get back from Skyhold. I’m not wasting my time saving your arse _again._ ”

Alistair jokingly holds out his hand. “Well, we’ll shake on it then. You promise to avoid ending up in the Inquisition dungeon, and I promise I will be my sneakiest and avoid being dragged off to Clarel in chains.” He deliberately raises a brow. “Or is this another promise you won’t make because you don’t know if you can keep it?”

She scoffs, putting her hand in his with a flourish. “You just keep your own arse out of trouble. You don’t need to worry about mine.”

Despite Hawke’s flippant tone, Alistair feels a surprising feeling of warmth filling his chest at her grasp. He gives her hand a brisk shake, pulling his face into mockingly solemn lines. “In the eyes of the Maker, it is sworn.”

Hawke laughs, and then a fierce grin flashes across her face, lighting up her eyes with a familiar fire. It reminds him of the very first time they met, a lifetime ago in Kirkwall, and he finds himself smiling unreservedly for the first time in what seems like forever. A knot he wasn’t even aware of loosens somewhere deep within him. It’s as if he’s suddenly remembered how to breathe again. For the briefest of moments, even the music of the Calling fades before the renewed surge of hope flooding his weary soul. He no longer faces the shadow alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I diverged from canon a little bit by having Alistair tell Hawke about the Calling before they meet the Inquisitor, but really I just couldn't find a good reason for him to keep it a secret any longer. I still don't understand why he would keep that secret from Hawke for so long but casually blurt it out to the Inquisitor within minutes of meeting them. It seems like a pretty key piece of information. If I were Hawke I'd be PISSED.


	8. Not Alone Do We Stand

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke (one week later): After years of solitude, having allies takes some getting used to.

Although the image of Varric getting his nipples tweaked by an irate Seeker affords Hawke great amusement, she does her best to enter Skyhold as discreetly as she can. Luckily, there is a steady stream of refugees and recruits traipsing into the fortress from all over Ferelden and Orlais. Blending in is easy enough. She dons a threadbare cloak with a deep hood and does her best to seem beaten-down and nervous, clutching her staff and mumbling any time anyone tries to speak to her. Most people are content to leave her alone.

Skyhold is an imposing place. Hawke can’t help but marvel at the sheer audacity of it – created from blocks of dense, impenetrable stone, yet somehow it manages to look as if it floats above the clouds. Surrounded by the immaculate, snow-capped peaks of the magnificent Frostback Mountains, Skyhold still dominates the landscape. Even though she knows nothing about its history, Hawke instinctively senses it is steeped in ancient magic. The aura of power that lingers around it is almost palpable against her skin.

Inside its walls, there is controlled chaos. Newcomers are made to wait in the courtyard, where they are briefly interviewed before being given some sort of assignment depending on their skillset. The more important guests are swiftly greeted and whisked off up the stairs into the main hall. There is a general air of bustle and efficiency, and Hawke has to admit that she is impressed… so far. But well-oiled bureaucracy alone is not going to win the battle against a darkspawn magister, a bunch of unhinged Templars, and a crazed Tevinter cult. Hawke is intensely curious to finally meet this Inquisitor she has read so much about in Varric’s letters. She admits to a sneaking sense of petty competition – who is this mysterious woman that has earned Varric’s regard so swiftly, who has risen from nothing to command a military force so formidable that is giving entire nations pause? Varric has had nothing but praise for her in his letters, but Hawke knows enough about her friend to take his stories with a heaping serving of salt. Varric is a canny businessman and a skilled hand with the crossbow, but he does have an unfortunate weakness for women with compelling stories. Is this Evelyn Trevelyan really the chosen of Andraste? Or perhaps the more important question is – does _she_ believe she is the chosen of Andraste?

Well, there’s no point mulling about it here in the courtyard. Hawke brushes her musings aside and brings her focus back to her surroundings. How will she manage to send word to Varric of her arrival without drawing attention to herself or accidentally crossing paths with the dreaded Seeker he keeps mentioning? She doesn’t want to waste the entire afternoon skulking around Skyhold in the off-chance she’ll be able to spot him among the crowd.

Suddenly, a familiar figure catches her eye, and she inhales sharply. A tall, blond man with broad shoulders is striding purposefully across the yard. He is clad in full, heavy plate armor yet moves with the ease of an experienced warrior accustomed to its weight. His cloak is an unassuming dark sable, but the richness of the fur collar hints at his rank. People acknowledge him with respectful nods as he passes. Clearly, he is no ordinary officer. But his air of authority is not why Hawke finds herself breathless. For a heartbeat, the world around her blurs, and she is back in the Gallows in Kirkwall, the air filled with screams and black smoke, shock and despair burning in the back of her throat.

Hawke gives her head a sharp shake, yanking herself back to the present. Then she darts through the crowd to intercept the man, planting herself in his path so abruptly that he almost walks into her before stopping dead in his tracks with an exclamation. “Maker’s breath, what…”

“Knight-Captain Cullen Rutherford.” Hawke looks up at him from beneath the shadow of her hood and gives him a tight smile.

“That is no longer my…”

He trails off, staring at her with dawning realization, his dark eyes wide with shock.

“I’m looking for Varric.” She asks him with deliberate casualness. “Is he about?”

He stares at her for a few moments longer, blinking as if he’s not sure she’s actually there. Then his brows draw together in a frown. She tenses, wondering if he’s about to call for his men and have her arrested on the spot, but instead he gives her a nod.

“Follow me,” he says curtly, already turning away from her to resume his stride. Hawke obligingly trails behind, keeping her hood pulled firmly over her head and her eyes on Cullen’s heels. Once or twice, a solider runs up to Cullen with some sort of report or request, but he dismisses them with a quick word and a wave, never pausing. Hawke wonders if they will spread tales of a strange visitor accompanying their commander, but the soldiers barely give her a second glance. They must be accustomed to him receiving anonymous messengers on a regular basis.

Cullen leads her a series of steps that take them to the top of the battlements. Up here, the wind is noticeably colder. A random gust blows Hawke’s hood off her head, but there is no one up here to see, so she lets it go. The view is absolutely breathtaking. The mountain peaks are blindingly white, gleaming pristinely against the crisp blue backdrop of a perfect winter sky. There is no sign of civilization as far as the eye can see. Hawke finds herself drawing in a full breath of air and letting it out in a long sigh. The iciness in her lungs feels fresh and clean, almost painfully so. She takes in another breath to savor the sensation.

He stops once they are standing atop one of the turrets and whirls around to face her so abruptly that she takes a step back, startled. But he makes no move to draw his sword, and she cautiously shifts into a more relaxed stance, crossing her arms across her chest.

“Hawke.” He finally speaks. “Where have you been?”

“Well, hello to you, too, Cullen.” Her words ripple with wry amusement at his lack of preamble. “It’s been so long. Hope you’ve been well.”

“The last time we met…”

Cullen trails off. Hawke meets his eyes, and for a moment they are connected by the horrific memory of that fateful day in Kirkwall. Her mirth fades, and her mouth twists into a bitter smile. “I suppose I owe you a thank you.”

“A thank you?” Cullen repeats, his eyes narrowing in confusion. “For what?”

“For allowing me to leave Kirkwall, rather than clapping me in irons and sending me off to the Chantry.” Hawke replies dryly. “Though perhaps you’re regretting being so merciful.”

Cullen swallows, leaving the implied question unanswered. “The rumors say you’ve spent the last couple of years working to push the rest of the Circles to rebellion. Is it true?”

“Is this some sort of feeble attempt to get me to incriminate myself, Knight-Captain?”

“That is no longer my title.” His response is automatic, clearly something he’s grown used to saying repeatedly. Then he sighs. “I am no longer a Templar. I am Commander of the Inquisition, now.”

Hawke opens her mouth, ready to retort _once a Templar, always a Templar_ with her usual glibness. But then the thought of Alistair gives her sudden pause. She sees his clear hazel eyes looking at her solemnly, and she feels strangely ashamed of her initial impulse. Alistair is, after all, a former Templar who _has_ changed his ways. Can the same be said of Cullen?

She closes her mouth, tilts her head and studies him through narrowed eyes, the silence stretching between them. In her time at Kirkwall, her general impression of him had been of an intense young man with a giant stick up his arse. Though she will concede he never struck her as cruel or hypocritical, unlike many others of his order. His greatest sin had been turning a blind eye to Meredith’s gradual decline into madness… but Hawke is painfully aware she is guilty of doing much the same with Anders. She has no right to point the finger there.

Also, Cullen has definitely changed. Outwardly he looks much the same: a little older, a little rougher around the edges. His square chin is covered with at least a day’s worth of stubble, and there are a few new lines around his eyes. A scar pulls slightly at his right upper lip, meaning his conventionally handsome face is no longer quite perfect, but Hawke privately thinks it makes him look more interesting. The burden of leadership weighs on his shoulders. At the same time, he seems more confident of his command than he did during his time as Knight-Captain in Kirkwall. Back then, he seemed as tightly wound as a badly tuned lute string, always on the verge of snapping. There is still an edge to him, but the years have hammered away at it, turning it from the brittleness of new iron to the fortified strength of tempered steel.

“I may have helped some of the Circles to finally throw off their chains, yes.” Hawke says eventually, finally answering his question. She gives him a challenging look. “If you’re about to give me shit for starting the entire Mage-Templar War, you can save your breath – I’ve heard it all a hundred times over already.”

Cullen blinks, nonplussed. “That’s… actually not what I was going to say.” A reluctant smile twists his mouth. “That would be giving you far too much credit, I think. I’m afraid you’ll have to share some of the blame with the rest of us.”

She arches an incredulous eyebrow at his jest. “Are you taking responsibility for what happened with Meredith?”

He swallows, but to his credit he doesn’t look away. “On one hand, I had a Knight-Commander that was losing her mind to paranoia, seeing blood magic in every shadow. On the other, I had runaway mages who were in truth dabbling in blood magic, using it to harm innocent people. I didn’t know what to do, so I made the cowardly decision to do nothing.”

“That makes two of us, at least.” Hawke barks a humorless laugh, surprised by his candor. “But I appreciate your willingness to admit your cowardice. Not many men would.”

“What use is there denying what’s already happened?” He gives a surprisingly philosophical shrug. “As I’ve already told you, I’m no longer a Templar. I serve the Inquisition. Evelyn… the Inquisitor herself is a mage, and we have allied ourselves with the mages that were under High Enchanter Fiona. My life has changed a great deal since we last saw each other in Kirkwall.”

Cullen working hand in hand with mages. Hawke is certain that somewhere, Meredith is spinning in her grave. The thought makes her laugh out loud. She _hopes_ the bitch is resting uneasily, wherever she is. Or preferably not resting at all. If there is any justice in the world, she is lost in the infinite darkness of the Void, doomed to eternal unrest. It’s the very least she deserves.

“I’m glad you find this so amusing.” Cullen remarks dryly, unaware of where her thoughts have led her.

“You have to admit, the Maker has a bloody twisted sense of humor.” Hawke laughs again at the look of disapproval on his face at her irreverence. “Apologies, that was uncouth of me.”

Cullen shakes his head. “It’s strangely comforting to know that some things haven’t changed, Champion.”

“Don’t fucking call me that.”

The words come out more sharply that she’d intended, shattering the fragile camaraderie between them. Cullen gives her a searching look, and she finds herself turning away, swallowing the surge of emotions that tighten her throat. It’s been so long since she’s heard anyone address her by that title. Though she knows Cullen used it without malice, the words feel like an unexpected dagger thrust into her vitals.

“I’m not the Champion of Kirkwall, anymore.” She clears her throat with a rough cough. “I never really deserved that damned title to begin with.”

Cullen makes no immediate reply. Hawke closes her eyes for a moment and takes a quiet breath. Seeing Cullen has thrown her off balance; he is a piece of her old life back in Kirkwall, and to see him so comfortably settled into this unfamiliar setting is jarring, like confronting a ghost in the middle of the day. But Cullen is alive, and he has moved on. And so has she. Hasn’t she?

When Hawke dares look back at him, his dark eyes are grave, but she senses no anger or judgement in his face.

“We’ve all made mistakes, Hawke.” His tone is carefully even. “Kirkwall has suffered greatly, and we both bear some responsibility for that. But as Varric will no doubt tell you, it’s rebuilding, slowly but surely. It wouldn’t even have that option if not for you.”

His unexpected words ease some of the pain in her chest. She smiles a little at the absurdity of it all, being comforted by a man she once considered her enemy not so very long ago.

“I… thank you, Cullen.” She flashes him a cheeky grin, unable to help herself. “It’s nice to know that being a Templar for most of your life didn’t quite rob you of all your decency.”

He answers her with a wry smile of his own. “Maybe I do regret being merciful after all.”

“Well, then, it’s a good thing Varric is expecting me.” Hawke counters with an unrepentant smirk.

Cullen accepts defeat with a good-natured shrug and leaves to find Varric. Hawke watches him go, feeling an odd mixture of bemusement and relief. She has no doubt the old Cullen would have had her arrested and thrown into a cell as soon as he’d lain eyes on her. They’d spent all their time in Kirkwall as adversaries, constantly at each other’s throats, each so convinced of their own righteousness and the other’s fault. But they were both different people, then. Have the subsequent years made them _better_ people? Hawke isn’t sure, but it seems safe to say that neither of them are as certain of themselves as they once were, experience and new titles notwithstanding. That doesn’t necessarily seem like a bad thing.

***

The Inquisitor, Evelyn Trevelyan, is tall and lovely, her dark hair the color of burnt umber, pulled back into a neat braided knot at the back of her neck. Her accent is precise and cultured, her movements practiced and graceful. She treats Hawke with measured respect, but there is no fawning or eager deference, only the consideration one gives to a slightly elevated equal. Unlike Hawke, who has often dreamt vainly of dwelling in comforting obscurity, Evelyn Trevelyan seems one of those people naturally born to leadership.

She is so damned perfect that Hawke feels unreasonably belligerent, and for a brief moment of insanity considers doing an about-face and going back the way she came. She is the fucking Champion of Kirkwall, and she’s never needed to beg help from anyone. But she knows she is being ridiculous and petty. Corypheus is her responsibility, and he must be stopped no matter the cost. If that requires her to swallow her pride and join hands with the bloody second coming of Andraste, with her perfect hair and perfect teeth, that is what she will do.

Hawke knows Varric will disapprove, but she cuts out the details of her story and only tells the Inquisitor the most important facts – that the Grey Wardens in Orlais have all disappeared, and that there is reason to believe Corypheus might be somehow influencing them. She also informs the Inquisitor of Alistair and his plans to find out the specifics of where the Wardens are gathering. (Hawke deliberately leaves out anything about the Calling; Alistair can tell the Inquisitor however much or little he damn well chooses.) Trevelyan quickly agrees to meet Alistair and Hawke in Crestwood so they can further discuss how to proceed. And with that, the meeting is over with a swiftness that is almost anticlimactic.

“I hope you will join us for dinner this evening.” Trevelyan says cordially once they conclude their business. “Though I should warn you that our dining hall is still a work in progress. Josephine is mortified that our chairs are all mismatched, and last week we discovered a bird nest in the rafters. One of the chicks defecated in some Orlesian lord’s soup and nearly caused a diplomatic incident.”

Hawke furrows her brow, unsure if the Inquisitor is being serious or not. “Thank you for the invitation, my lady, but I was actually planning to start making my way back to Crestwood while there’s still daylight.”

“What?” Trevelyan exclaims, and for a moment her aura of aloof perfection dissipates as she stares at Hawke in what is clearly disappointment. “You can’t go so soon. You’ve only just arrived! Please, stay for dinner.” She takes Hawke’s hand in an impulsive gesture, and this time her grin is wide and almost girlish, not the carefully beatific smile she’d bestowed earlier. “Varric’s told me so much about you, and I have so many questions. And Cassandra would murder me if she knew I’d let you go before she’d even had a chance to see you.”

Varric is standing just behind the Inquisitor, and at the mention of the name Cassandra he looks comically alarmed. Hawke swallows her laughter and turns her attention back to the Inquisitor, who is looking at her with an eagerness that is surprisingly endearing, a marked contrast to the flawless façade she’d been presenting to Hawke just moments earlier. She raises her brows and shrugs in acquiescence.

“Well, I suppose one night won’t make much difference.”

The Inquisitor squeezes her hand with a noise that sounds suspiciously like a squeal. Then she seems to catch herself. With a small cough she releases Hawke’s hand and straightens, effortlessly slipping back into the role of benevolent authority as easily as donning a cloak.

“I will see you at dinner, then.”

Hawke inclines her head. “Thank you for the invitation, my lady.”

“Please, just call me Evelyn.” The Inquisitor gives her a small smile, subdued but no less sincere, before turning away, leaving Hawke alone with Varric on the top of the battlements.

“She’s… very nice.” Hawke remarks somewhat begrudgingly once Evelyn is safely out of earshot.

Varric chuckles. “Only you would describe the Inquisitor, the fabled Herald of Andraste, as _nice._ ”

He passes her the brown bottle he’s been swigging from since the start of the meeting. She takes it and puts it to her lips. It’s some sort of dwarven ale, dark and sour. She swallows with a grimace and passes it back to Varric. When he takes the bottle from her, her skin prickles with a brief sense of uncanny familiarity. So much time has passed since they shared a bottle of beer, and yet being here with him makes it feel like it was only yesterday.

“So you ran into our Warden prince again.” Varric muses, looking at her with an all-too familiar gleam in his eye.

“Several times, actually.”

“Well?” he demands when she fails to elaborate further. “There must be a story there. Are you going to leave me hanging?”

Hawke laughs a little, thinking about her various encounters with Alistair over the years. They have certainly been colorful. “I suggested you do what you always do and make something up. Unfortunately, the true story involves me being an ass, so I’d rather not tell it, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t spin shit out of thin air, Hawke. You need to give me something to work with.” Varric grumbles.

“Haven’t I supplied you with enough bullshit for several novels?” Hawke retorts unsympathetically. “I think it’s someone else’s turn to star in your tall tales. Evelyn looks much more suited to it than I ever was.”

Varric takes another swig from his bottle and shakes his head. “If you think she’s some heroine out of an old Chantry tale, you’d be wrong. She’s more like you than you’d think.”

“I’ll have to take your word for it.” Hawke lifts a dubious brow. Evelyn Trevelyan is nice enough, but everything about her marks her as privileged, from her posh accent to her neatly trimmed fingernails. _Privileged_ is not a concept Hawke feels familiar with. Nothing has ever been handed to her on a silver platter. Life has taught her that even after you fight tooth and nail for what you want, it can all be taken away from you in the blink of eye.

“If you get her drunk enough at dinner tonight, you can see for yourself.” Varric flashes a wicked grin.

The thought of having a social dinner with a bunch of strangers is already giving Hawke a headache, but she manages to summon up a smile for her old friend. “Well, then. Lead the way.”

***

“So you ended the night with the Commander of the Inquisition having to walk back to the barracks completely naked?”

Almost a week later and several gold pieces lighter from an impromptu game of Wicked Grace, Hawke is back in the cave in Crestwood, sharing a rickety bench with Alistair next to the fire as she tells him of her visit to Skyhold. The weather and the undead infestation have not improved in the slightest since she’s been away, but she has brought back some cheese and wine from Skyhold, along with a loaf of bread from the village, which has Alistair as giddy as a boy on Feastday. Hawke watches him munching away with gusto on a chunk of cheese and wonders with some amusement if history books will remember this odd obsession of the uncrowned king of Ferelden.

“Well, it was more of a stumble by that point.” She sips her mug of wine with a sigh of satisfaction. This is no watered-down tavern plonk, but a proper Antivan red, pleasantly tart without leaving a sour aftertaste on the tongue. There are a few things about living in Hightown that she misses, and good wine is definitely one of them. “Luckily for him, most of the castle was in bed.”

“So is the Inquisitor planning to challenge Corypheus to a drinking match?” Alistair queries around a mouthful of cheese. “Or do her companions have talents other than gambling and consuming alcohol?”

“Between them and your powers of making cheese disappear, I don’t see how we can possibly lose.”

“Ouch.”

Hawke laughs at his grimace. “Well, over dinner they did tell me about their most recent adventure… which was thwarting a Venatori plot to assassinate Empress Celine at a banquet. Is that heroic enough for you?”

Alistair swallows and raises a brow. “From what I’ve heard, banquets in Orlais that _don’t_ end with someone being murdered before dessert are considered rather dull.”

“And they call _us_ uncivilized.” Hawke snorts. “Although to be fair, I can’t say with certainty that Mother never poisoned any of her guests at her parties. But if she did, at least she was discreet about it. No one ever remembered much of anything by the next morning anyway.”

Alistair takes a drink of his wine and grins. “That actually sounds like the ideal dinner party.” He contemplates his mug thoughtfully. “Unfortunately I don’t think half a bottle of wine is going to be enough to achieve this effect.”

Hawke is silent for a moment. She has managed to surprise herself with that off-handed comment about her mother. For so long, she has done her best to keep any and all memories of Kirkwall carefully at bay, only allowing herself to consider them in small fragments, in minute doses, like a spy trying to inure herself to a particularly deadly poison. Seeing Cullen and Varric seems to have triggered something within her. Ever since leaving Skyhold, she finds herself reminiscing more and more about her past. Perhaps the strangest thing is that the memories are not as debilitating as she remembers them to be. She can conjure up an image of her mother, looking lovely in a fashionable lavender gown, making deft small talk with Lady So-and-So while periodically shooting warning glares at Hawke in an attempt to get her to mingle with the guests, and while the memory causes her heart to clench with sadness, it no longer brings her to her knees with grief as it once might have.

“Hawke. I was joking.”

She starts, looks up to see him staring at her with a half-smile, his hazel-green eyes crinkled in concern. An unexpected ripple of warmth eases the tightness in her chest. It flusters her. Since when has his concern had the power to offer her comfort?

She scoffs loudly to cover her confusion. “Are you saying that the two of us getting blind drunk in the middle of hostile territory wouldn’t be a sensible idea?”

Alistair chuckles and raises an eyebrow. “What is it you always say? You’ve been accused of many things, but being sensible is not one of them?”

“You cheeky bastard.”

“Really, there’s no need to keeping throwing that in my face.”

Hawke rummages around in her bag and finds what she’s looking for. She slams the small brown bottle onto the table with a wicked grin.

“Carnal.” Alistair picks it up and reads the label. The dubious look on his face morphs into amazement when he looks at the date. “8:69 Blessed! Maker’s breath, Hawke, where did you get this?”

“The Inquisitor gave it to me as a present.” Hawke unceremoniously grabs the bottle and works the stopper free. A potent fragrance hits her nostrils. She hands it to Alistair, who sniffs it gingerly before recoiling in horror.

“You’re not seriously proposing we drink this. It’s older than both of us combined. Maker only knows what it’s turned into at this stage.”

His hesitation only serves to stoke her recklessness. Getting piss-blind drunk is seeming like a better idea by the minute. She snatches the bottle back, looks Alistair dead in the eye, and takes a deliberate swig. The liquor is syrupy on the tongue but burns going down. She can feel it when it hits her stomach. It takes some effort not to react, but Hawke manages to blink and smile at Alistair without coughing like a child sneaking into her parents’ bottle of whiskey.

Alistair laughs, caught between disbelief and admiration. “Champion of Kirkwall indeed. Did you _drink_ the Arishok to death?”

“Don’t be such a Chantry brother. I thought you’d left the Templar life behind you, Warden.” Hawke taunts him. “Or is it physically impossible to remove the stick up one’s arse once they ram it up in there?”

“You’ve really missed your calling as a poet.” Alistair makes a face of distaste at her crude insult. Then he takes the bottle from her, heaves a sigh of resignation, and knocks it back. To his credit, he takes a fairly generous gulp before slamming it back down again with a splutter of disgust. Hawke giggles heartlessly at his expression.

“That wasn’t so hard, was it?” She feels a tinge of giddiness buzzing in her skull and leans forward to grab the bottle back. Say what you like about the Orlesians, but they certainly seem to know how to brew a proper drink. “Maybe if you Wardens drank more, you’d be less grumpy.”

“Hah!” Alistair pulls the bottle out of her reach and unexpectedly takes another drink without being prompted. This time, there is no spluttering. “Haven’t you heard of Conscription Ale?”

He proceeds to describe the disturbing Warden tradition of pouring any and all leftover liquor into a single receptacle, where it all gradually ferments into a potent brew that Alistair reassures her, in his best Orlesian accent, is _tres unique_ to each Warden and their respective flasks. This reminds Hawke of a mercenary she’d once had the displeasure of working with during her time with Athenril, a man named Graham who considered wasting alcohol a sin and would go so far as to lick the tabletop if he happened to spill his drink. They spend the next couple of hours trading stories of their adventures that are equal parts ridiculous, incredible, and entertaining, slowly working their way through the bottle of Carnal, which somehow tastes better the more they drink it.

Finally Hawke turns the bottle upside down to confirm that it has been well and truly emptied. She is pleasantly shitfaced, as Varric would say, and her throat aches from laughing and talking so much. It’s not something she’s been in the habit of doing these past few years, and she is vaguely surprised at how quickly the hours have passed.

Alistair is watching her silently, his mouth curved in a faint smile but his eyes slightly unfocused as if he is musing something over. She meets his gaze, and suddenly the silence seems heightened by an unseen tension, a strange awareness sparking between them. Or perhaps that’s just the Carnal swimming through her veins, giving her ridiculous ideas. How apropos. A small giggle escapes her at this thought, abruptly cut short by an undignified hiccup.

“I think it’s bedtime for you, Hawke.” Alistair claps a hand on her shoulder with a grin. “If you ask me very nicely, I won’t go around telling the world that the great Champion of Kirkwall was defeated by half a bottle of Orlesian firewater.”

She rolls her eyes and scoffs. “Fuck off, Your Highness. I’m as sober as Andraste’s knickers and you’re so pissed I doubt you’ll remember your own name come morning.”

Alistair answers her belligerence with a chuckle as he stands, swaying only slightly, and offers her a hand. “All right, Hawke. If you can walk to your bed without tripping over your own feet, I will fully acknowledge your superiority.”

Hawke glares at him and recklessly leaps up. The cavern spins around her as she lurches backwards with a yell of surprise. Then she is yanked forwards, and before she quite knows what is happening, she is draped gracelessly against Alistair, his arms wrapped around her waist as he braces against her dead weight.

He eases her to her feet, and for a moment she is looking up at him, their noses almost touching, so close that all she can see are his gold-green eyes staring into her own. He is holding her close, a warm, solid presence against her skin. She feels her lips tremble with something between apprehension and anticipation. Have they been here before? It feels unnervingly familiar.

He abruptly clears his throat and straightens, not letting go of her but shifting so he is supporting her from the side. She catches a glimpse of his flushed cheek.

“Well, I think that settles that.” His voice is a little too loud and cheerful as it echoes against the walls. He starts guiding Hawke towards a corner of the cave, carefully looking everywhere but at her. Her head is fuzzy with Orlesian liquor and bad ideas. She wonders what Alistair would do if she pushed him down onto the bed and jumped on top of him. Although in her current state it’s likely she’d just fall asleep. Either that or vomit on his face. Hawke clenches her teeth to keep in the laughter bubbling up from within.

He deposits her gently onto the cot. “You should get some rest, Hawke.”

“What about you?”

She reaches out and boldly grabs his sleeve as he’s turning away. Alistair pauses and gives her a quizzical look.

“What about me?”

“Last time I was here…” Hawke stops and clears her throat, trying not to slur her words like some drunken slut. Maker’s balls, that liquor is easily the strongest she’s ever sampled. She’s not sure if she should thank the Inquisitor or suspect her of attempted murder. “Last time I was here, you stayed up the entire night. What was that about?”

He shifts his stance, but she keeps a firm grip on his sleeve. “I… was just keeping watch.”

“Are you afraid we’re going to be gnawed to death by a stray nug?”

He raises a brow. “They are far more vicious than many give them credit for, you know.”

“Don’t change the subject, Warden.” Hawke gives his sleeve a sharp tug. “Were you worried I was going to sully your virtue? Believe me when I’m say I’m far too inebriated to do any sort of molesting tonight.”

“That’s very reassuring.” He shakes his head and sighs. “I’m not worried about nugs… or you, Hawke. I just don’t sleep very well nowadays, that’s all.”

He still isn’t looking at her, but even in her drunken state Hawke can see the unspoken pain etched into his face, the exhausting underlining the shadows around his eyes. Recklessly, she blurts out the first question that comes to her Carnal-addled mind.

“Is it the Calling?”

Alistair finally turns towards her, stricken. If she’d punched him in the gut with no warning he couldn’t be any more surprised. Hawke finds herself holding her breath, waiting for him to answer.

“I hear it all the time.” When he finally speaks, his voice is thin and hoarse. “Sometimes it’s in the background, when I’m fighting, or talking, or focusing on something else, and I can just about ignore it. Other times…” He sighs, his shoulders slumping. “It fills my head until I can think of nothing else.”

“What does it sound like?” Hawke whispers, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“Like… singing. But all wrong.” Though the air in the cavern is cool, she can see a bead of sweat trickling from his brow. “It makes you feel like there’s something crawling on the side of your skin. It reminds me of… of things we saw in the Deep Roads, when we went looking for Branka and the Anvil. Things that shouldn’t exist.” He swallows hard, and his eyes take on a far-away look. “But somehow it also makes you… _want._ Like you’re missing a part of you, and the song is promising to help you find it. You can feel it like a string tied around your soul, and the Calling is always tugging. Not hard, but… insistent. And you know you must not follow, but at the same time… what a relief it would be to stop resisting and just… let go.”

He is droning in an almost dreamy voice, his eyes glazed over, and Hawke feels her heart skip a beat at the _emptiness_ in his face.

“Alistair!”

Impulsively she yanks at his sleeve with all her strength. He grunts, caught off balance, and comes crashing down on top of her, pinning her to the cot with his weight.

“Maker’s breath!” He yells, immediately scrambling to push himself up. Hawke grabs his face, forcing him to freeze, propped up on his elbows. He’s still practically lying on top of her, and for a moment she’s tempted to yank him down for a kiss, to wrap her legs around his waist and arch her back against him. Surely that would help him… forget. Or at least provide a temporary distraction. But her last shred of common sense is shrieking in panic that it’s a _terrible_ idea, and for once in her life, she decides it’s probably best to listen.

“Alistair,” she says again, as serious as she can be. “Don’t be an idiot.”

He blinks at her, and the ghost of a smile crosses his face. “I usually am an idiot, I admit. But could you be a little more specific?”

“What I mean is, you can stop acting the lone heroic man who manfully suffers in manly silence.” Hawke shakes his head a little for emphasis. “Because you _aren’t_ alone anymore, Alistair.”

He looks back at her silently, and the emotion in his eyes twists her heart. She can sense the silent agony within him, the sleepless nights of torture when giving in to the darkness would have seemed like a blessed release. Although she’ll never know what it’s like to hear the strains of an Archdemon inside her head, she is intimately familiar with the whispers of despair that float up from the abyss within your own soul. How darkly seductive they can be.

She lets go of him, shifting until she is pressed against the wall, leaving a space on the cot next to her. “Come to bed. That’s not a request, by the way,” she adds, only half in jest.

Alistair looks at her for a long moment, clearly wrestling with internal conflict, but then finally he lowers himself onto the mattress. The cot creaks in protest under their combined weight but manages to refrain from collapsing.

They lie facing each other, their bodies barely touching despite the narrowness of the bed. This close, she can smell the sweetness of the Carnal on his breath, see the hints of ginger glinting in his stubble. She reaches out, slowly, as if she’s trying to soothe a wary stray, and takes his hand. He looks vaguely alarmed, but she makes no other movement, other than to entwine her fingers in his and close her eyes. Slowly, the tension leaves his muscles, and his breathing evens out into the slow, regular rhythm of sleep.

***

When the nightmares grip him, she pulls him close. He is bigger than her, and much stronger, but she isn’t afraid. She presses his head against her shoulder, tangles her legs with his as he twists and cries out in fear. He wraps an arm around her and clings desperately, as if she is his only anchor in a storm-tossed sea.

Gradually, the nightmares recede. She nestles her cheek into his sweat-dampened hair and falls asleep to the steady rise and fall of his breath, his body a heavy but comforting weight against her own.


	9. Paid in Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alistair (one week later): They learn just how high a price the Wardens are willing to pay.

Alistair has seen many impressive landscapes in his life. He has stood under the emerald canopy of the Brecilian forest and witnessed ancient trees come alive and speak in riddles, possessed by spirits older still. He has wandered the great stone halls of the dwarven thaigs, an entire metropolis chiseled from solid rock and shaped by crimson rivers of molten fire. Yet the scenery of the desert before him still takes his breath away. Nothing but yellow sand and barren red rock as far as the eye can see. There is a strange beauty in its desolation. The sands whisper with each gust of wind, rippling into sinuous curves like waves on an endless golden ocean. But he knows the serenity is only an illusion. Even without the threat of blood magic and hostile cultists, the desert is a deadly place. If you aren’t lucky enough to be instantly mauled to death by an angry varghest, the heat and lack of water will kill you almost as quickly.

Next to him, Hawke is trying to cool herself with a delicate lace and paper fan, an incongruous contrast with her well-worn leather armor and silverite pauldrons. She is staring at a map spread out on the table in front of them. “You Wardens choose the best meeting spots.”

He shrugs. “Compared to our usual monthly luncheons in the Deep Roads, this place is rather charming. Although I think I prefer deepstalkers to wyverns. Far easier to kill, though unfortunately just as ugly.”

They are currently in one of the Inquisition camps, organized around a small oasis and partly sheltered by a convenient sandstone butte providing some much needed shade. Around them, scouts bustle about their various duties. They are all waiting for word from the Inquisitor and her party before they make any further advances west, to where the Wardens are presumably gathering.

Hawke tosses her fan on the table with a curse and flicks her hand in a careless gesture upwards. A sudden blast of icy wind and snowflakes swirls through the air, provoking several startled yelps from the unwary scouts closest to them. Alistair feels vaguely like he should disapprove at this unnecessary display of magic, but the coolness on his brow is undeniably welcome. He meets Hawke’s challenging glare with his best look of wide-eyed innocence, prompting her to snort and roll her eyes.

“This is bloody stupid. Here we are twiddling our thumbs while the Wardens are performing blood magic rituals right under our noses.”

“The Inquisitor ordered everyone to hold back until she arrived.” Alistair reminds her. Secretly he is burning with just as much impatience as she is. The letter he’d managed to steal from the Warden camp in Crestwood made it clear _where_ the Wardens were gathering, but not why. He is so close to finally discovering what exactly Clarel and that snake Erimond have planned for the Wardens, and every minute feels like another step closer to inevitable disaster. Will they be in time to stop whatever is happening? Or will they be greeted by the consequences of whatever terrible blood magic Erimond has conjured up for Maker only knows what purpose?

“We are not under her authority.” Hawke mutters under her breath. She looks at him, her eyes startlingly cold and blue under the sheer white scarf she’s wrapped around her head to counter the relentless sun. “And we’re of no use to anybody here. We should scout ahead to the ritual tower and find out what we can before the others arrive.”

It isn’t a very prudent plan – sneaking up on the tower will be hard, seeing as there’s almost no cover in this barren landscape. And they have no idea how well the tower is guarded, or how many Wardens are actually inside. But Alistair finds himself nodding in agreement. Anything would be better than this endless waiting, with nothing to do but slowly melt into puddles.

Harding, the lead Inquisition scout, doesn’t bat an eyelid when Hawke informs them of their plan. “Just keep an eye out for the Venatori,” she admonishes them with the air of a mother cautioning her reckless children. “We’ve run into quite a few of them around here. They travel in small groups, but there’s always at least one mage.” She pauses, considering the two of them briefly. “Not that I think you’ll have too much trouble with them.”

“Thank you.” Alistair replies. “Please let the Inquisitor know we will wait for her at the entrance to the tower.”

“I’ll tell her that’s your plan.” Harding says neutrally, but with the air of someone too polite to say what they really think.

Once they are away from camp and safely out of earshot, Alistair turns to Hawke with a wry grin. “I think Harding has decided we’re both half-wits.”

“Well, two halves equal one full set, so as long as we stay together, we’ll manage.” Hawke quips.

They move silently for a time, the only sound being the rustling of loose sand under their feet and the occasional unearthly shrieks of varghests in the distance. The sky is an unforgiving, borderless blue broken only by the white-hot sun just moving past its peak, casting severe shadows that cling closely to their feet.

The sheer monotony of their surroundings only serves to amplify the whisperings of the Calling inside his head. Alistair tries to keep it all at bay by focusing intently on Hawke. She walks one step ahead of him, occasionally pausing to take out her compass and squint at it balefully with a muttered invective that makes him smile and shake his head. In the week it has taken them to travel from Crestwood to the Western Approach, she has swiftly become the one stable presence in his life. He used to dread nightfall, each hour longer than the next, that interminable stretch of silence and darkness when the voices plague his dreams with terror and longing. The Calling still fills his nights, but now Hawke’s familiar presence, her fingers entwined in his own, give him an anchor to cling to whenever he feels like it would be a relief to finally let go and drown himself in the abyss.

Sometimes, as he lies next to her and watches her sleep, he wonders what it would be like to kiss her, to hold her in his arms and feel her warmth upon his skin, flesh against flesh with nothing else between them. These musings stir up a confusing mixture of desire, apprehension, and guilt. Does he fantasize about Hawke because she reminds him so much of Solona? Back when they barely knew each other, all he could think about whenever he looked at Hawke was the myriad ways she resembled her cousin… and the myriad ways she didn’t. Now… it’s as if Solona’s ghost, once an almost tangible presence between them, has faded away to a whisper. Alistair has to remind himself it’s been almost a decade since her death. It’s only natural for the memories he has of her to grow fainter, less painful. So why does it make him feel like he’s the worst sort of traitor?

The Calling suddenly roils into a discordant swell, as if amplified by the pangs of self-doubt in his heart. He halts in his tracks and squeezes his eyes shut, giving his head a violent shake in an attempt to make it stop.

“Is the Archdemon whispering sweet nothings in your ear again?” Hawke speaks up with her customary bluntness.

Alistair opens his eyes, his mouth twisting grimly into something that is not quite a smile. “Yes, he’s just tried to tempt me with offerings of eternal cheese wheels.”

She gives him a considering look, then cocks her head thoughtfully. “Do you hear that?”

It takes him a moment to shake off the Calling and focus his hearing on his physical surroundings. The gusts of hot wind carry the faintest mutterings of an unfamiliar tongue.

They scramble behind the nearest rocks and crouch, holding their breaths. The voice grows nearer. It is male, guttural and sinister, and Alistair recognizes it as Tevinter. Hawke risks a quick peek.

“I think that’s a Venatori mage,” she whispers. An involuntary shiver runs through him as her lips brush against his ear. “He has three others with him. Are you ready?”

Alistair stares at her, alarmed. “Ready?” he echoes, almost forgetting to keep his voice down.

She flashes him a grin he has unfortunately become all too familiar with. It’s as good as a promise – a promise that she’s about to do something crazy. He only has a heartbeat to prepare himself before she scrambles on top of the boulders they are hiding behind and unleashes a barrage of lightning on the unsuspecting enemy.

He is already sprinting towards them as she casts her spell, adrenaline pumping madly through his veins. Bolts of electricity crackle and leap between the four Venatori, rendering two of them completely stunned. But the mage has already recovered and is pointing his staff in Hawke’s direction, shouting in his strange language. Purple energy manifests from nothing and streaks towards her with deadly intent.

Hawke doesn’t flinch. She throws up her hand, and the energy hits an invisible barrier, disintegrating into nothing.

“For the Wardens!” Alistair bellows, and his war cry catches the attention of the three warriors. They all turn towards him, blades raised, but he barrels past them with a shout, his shield raised in front of him like a battering ram, knocking them aside. Then he gathers his focus and _pushes_ outward with his mind, sending out that clean, cold blast of metaphysical wind that sweeps all the magic in the area into oblivion.

The Venatori mage gapes in shock. He is still open-mouthed when Alistair plunges his blade straight through him, darkening the yellow sand with blood.

Alistair yanks his sword back and whirls around to face the others. He is being attacked from all sides, and the world shrinks to the clatter of blades raining down upon his shield, sparks flying as he tries to counter the flurry of blows with his sword.

He hears Hawke shouting, and the acrid stench of burning fills the air. One of the men screams, twisting in agony as flames greedily consume his flesh. The other Venatori instinctively flinch away from their doomed companion. Alistair presses his advantage, knocking one of them to the ground with his shield and finishing him with a swift, savage stab to the throat. But then he abruptly finds himself thrown to his hands and knees, the breath in his lungs expelled all at once by a powerful strike to his ribs. His armor has stopped the blade from drawing blood, but he is still momentarily incapacitated, gasping desperately for air. Dimly, he is aware of his enemy raising his blade for the finishing blow.

Something immense whizzes past, slams into the man with terrible force. He spatters against a boulder with a sickening crunch, limbs sprawled every which way, frozen in a grotesque parody of a dance.

Alistair is just about to draw a ragged breath of relief when he feels all the hairs on the back of his neck rise. At almost the same moment Hawke screams his name.

He whips his head to see the Venatori mage, still on the ground, dying but not yet dead, his hands plunged into his own wound as he mutters to himself. An angry red glow begins to emanate from the hole in his chest. Then he looks directly at Alistair, and his bloody mouth stretches into a satisfied smile.

He is still smiling when the demon erupts from his body and rends it in two.

Alistair is so disgusted by what he has just witnessed that it takes him a moment to realize the demon is a rage demon, a thing of molten fire that slithers towards him with alarming speed. But just as he is raising his shield, the air turns ice-cold against his skin.

The demon is instantly frozen in place, encased in a thick coating of white-blue frost. One well-placed bash of Alistair’s shield, and the demon is no more, shattered into countless fragments that are already starting to melt into the scorching hot sand.

He lets out a long breath, slings his shield onto his back, wipes his sword on a dead man’s tunic, sheathes it. The adrenaline of battle ebbs away, leaving him drenched in sweat, his heartbeat pounding in his ears.

“What in the name of Andraste’s flaming sword was _that_ all about, Hawke?”

Alistair is still breathing hard, his ribs still sore from the earlier blow. He stares at Hawke, caught between incredulity and anger at her recklessness.

Hawke flashes him an unrepentant grin as she walks towards him, swinging her staff with unwarranted cheer. “Did one of them land a hit?” She reaches his side and lays an unexpectedly gentle hand on his chest. A tingle spreads through him as he feels the pain fade away, leaving only the faint discomfort of a mild bruise.

He sighs, staring down at her in resignation. The sparkle in her blue eyes makes it difficult to stay angry with her.

“Was that _really_ necessary? We could have stayed hidden and avoided this entire… situation.” He waves a hand to indicate the four bodies, one of which is still gently smoldering, giving off a disconcertingly savory smell.

“Yes, but then you would still be listening to those bloody voices in your head, wouldn’t you?”

Alistair stares at her, startled by her unexpected answer. Belatedly he realizes that the song of the Calling has been pushed back to a dull but bearable hum in the back of his mind, and he hasn’t even really been conscious of it until just now. His initial anger is undermined by sheer disbelief, and perhaps even a little reluctant awe at her insanity.

“Did you just attack a band of evil cultists to provide me with a _distraction?_ ”

Hawke cackles. “Don’t be so damn dramatic, Warden. All we have to show for it is one bruise between the two of us. Anyway, it worked, didn’t it?” She shrugs and laughs. “A good skirmish and some justified bloodshed are always good for the soul.”

“Is that so?” Alistair raises a skeptical eyebrow, though seeing as he actually feels better after said justified bloodshed, he can’t really argue with her.

“Even with that ridiculous farce of blood magic.” Hawke scoffs and rolls her eyes. “With all that melodramatic pantomime, I was expecting a minor pride demon at _least_.”

He can’t help laughing at her obvious disappointment. “What would you have done if it _had_ been a pride demon? Shake its hand, say thank you for dropping by?”

“I think the Warden who ended the Blight and the Champion of Kirkwall could have handled a bloody pride demon between the two of them.”

She is looking up at him, her dark blue eyes creased with unrepentant amusement. Her black hair is damp and unruly, and her face is pink from the heat of the desert sun and speckled with bits of sand. She looks slightly unhinged… and impossibly beautiful.

Alistair doesn’t allow himself to think. He bends his head towards hers, a bit hesitant, wondering if she’ll pull away, or perhaps fry him with an angry lightning bolt. But she pushes herself up on her tiptoes and suddenly they are kissing. Her lips are dry and rough from the heat and he can taste salt on her skin. Her mouth opens, her tongue darts boldly against his own, and suddenly their tentative kiss deepens into something more urgent. A thrill of desire, something he’d thought long since dead, unfurls somewhere deep within him, rippling throughout his body like a draught of pure lyrium, thrumming with almost painful intensity.

Hawke pulls back a little, breaking contact. Her cheeks are flushed, but she grins at him with her usual cheek. “I’ll take that as an expression of gratitude.”

He clears his throat, trying to match her nonchalant tone. “The Chantry warned me about women like you.”

“Flatterer.” Her eyes are still locked on his face, glinting with amusement and… something else. Would it be presumptuous to say it was desire?

Alistair wants nothing more than to pull her back into his arms and kiss her until the world around them disappears into insignificance, but they both know that now is not the time. He shakes his head in an attempt to refocus his thoughts. Now, in the middle of a Maker-forsaken desert, on their way to stop the Wardens from performing a Tevinter blood magic ritual, is _definitely_ not the time. He can’t help but snort to himself at the absurdity of the situation.

“I don’t know what you find so amusing, but I think we might be running a little late.” Hawke finally looks away from him to squint up at the sky, then frowns at the bodies scattered on the ground. “These Tevinter pieces of shit were headed in the same direction we were, so that’s encouraging, I suppose.”

“Right.” Alistair squares his shoulders, quickly sobered by the reminder of why they are here. “Onward to bloodshed and ritual dismemberments, then.”

***

The ritual tower, it turns out, is not really much of a tower at all. It’s more of an open-air structure, vaguely triangular in shape, the steps starting at the wider base and leading up to the narrow top. The platform at the tower’s apex is surrounded by a ring of battlements, shielding it from view. Jagged metal pillars outlining the outer edges, easily triple the height of a normal person, make the entire thing look like the severed lower jaw of some monstrous creature.

A deep gorge lies between them and the tower, the only point of access being a single stone bridge that leads straight to the main arch at the foot of the tower’s staircase. There are no guards to be seen anywhere.

Alistair strains his ears. At the moment, the wind is blowing in precisely the wrong direction, making it difficult to know if there are any sounds coming from the tower. 

“Are we early?” Hawke murmurs, shading her eyes as she squints across the bridge. “Or are we too late?”

Suddenly there is a pulse of green light. It’s so quick and faint that Alistair has a moment of doubt that he saw it at all, but then he feels a familiar prickling on his skin. At the same time, Hawke exhales. “We’re right on time, it seems. There’s definitely some sort of magic in the air.”

The wind shifts, and Alistair thinks he can hear someone shrieking in the distance. He finds himself clutching the hilt of his sword, a shiver running down his spine despite the scorching heat. “Maker preserve us.”

Hawke is already holding her staff, still staring in the direction of the tower. “I doubt He’s about at the moment.” She swivels to look back the way they came. “I think I see people approaching. Let’s hope it’s the Inquisitor and not enemy reinforcements.”

Alistair doesn’t turn. His eyes are glued to the tower, his hand wrapped tightly around his sword. Another pulse of light, another faint scream snatched away by the wind. What is happening behind those walls?

“We need to go in now. We might still have a chance to stop them before it’s too late.”

“Listen to me.” Hawke pulls at his arm, forcing him to look at her. “ _I’m_ the reckless one, and you’re the sensible one. Remember? We have absolutely no idea how many of the enemy are in there, and our allies are minutes away. We should wait.”

“The enemy?” Alistair echoes in disbelief at her choice of words.

Hawke shakes her head impatiently. “We will save whoever we can, you know that. But we must be prepared for the worst. Whatever magic they’re doing in there is something that requires blood magic.” She looks back towards the tower for a moment. He can feel her shiver through the hand clutching his arm. “And not the kind you can get away with sacrificing a chicken for.”

Alistair shakes her off. Anger rises in him at her words, but it is mixed with a building dread – the unshakeable fear that Hawke is right, and his fellow Wardens may have already crossed a line from which there is no return. He’d thought he’d sufficiently steeled himself for the possibility that the Wardens couldn’t be saved. Apparently not. The Calling is creeping back into his consciousness, as if it is being fed by the insidious tendrils of despair that have started to take root in his heart, threatening to choke him with panic. He swallows.

“Every minute we delay may mean another dead Warden.”

Hawke is of slight stature and slender build, but she is firmly planted between him and the bridge, a familiar expression on her face. It is the face of the Champion of Kirkwall – calm and resolute, but a grim warning to any who would stand in her way.

“If we rush in there and get ourselves killed, it will most likely mean the death of countless more.” She turns slightly to point at the tower. “If you could stop thinking with your sword, you’d realize that this place is not anywhere near big enough to hold all the Wardens of Orlais. The bulk of the Wardens are not here.”

Alistair stares for a moment, then takes in a deep breath, straining to regain his equilibrium. Hawke is right. The tower is not large enough to contain all the Orlesian Wardens at once. But it is certainly capable of holding enough people that he and Hawke would be grossly outnumbered. Getting himself killed here would not be a heroic death, merely a stupid one.

“I’m sorry,” he mutters, pressing his thumb and forefinger into his eyelids with a grimace. He is the last hope of the Orlesian Wardens, and he knows he doesn’t have the luxury of falling to pieces. He’ll have to save that for a more convenient time.

“Alistair.” Hawke’s voice is gentler, now. He opens his eyes to see her looking up at him. She takes one of his hands and holds it firmly in her own, her eyes bright with empathy. “We are fighting this battle together. Don’t forget that.”

He clutches her hand with the desperation of a drowning man clinging to his last lifeline. With their fingers entwined, they watch the distant shapes approach, gradually solidifying into identifiable forms. The Inquisitor, clad in a pale grey cloak, wielding a staff tipped with a brilliant white blade carved from stone. She is preceded by Varric, his enormous crossbow held at the ready, his normally easygoing expression replaced with a grim mask. Flanking her are Cassandra, the Seeker who seems to radiate constant disapproval at everything and nothing, and Blackwall, the grizzled Grey Warden veteran who always seems oddly reluctant to engage with him.

As the party draws near, Alistair discreetly releases Hawke’s hand with a mild feeling of embarrassment. He’s a big boy – he really doesn’t want the Inquisitor to think he needs literal hand holding to get through the battle ahead.

Hawke smiles at him knowingly before turning to greet the others. “Inquisitor.”

“Evelyn, please.” The Inquisitor corrects her. “We came as quickly as we could. Are the Wardens here?”

“Yes.” He tries not to stare at her hand – the one with the Anchor, as it is called. Even out of the corner of his eye he can see the faint green light shimmering out of her palm. It’s not the first time he’s seeing it, but it still makes him feel vaguely queasy. “At least, some of them are here. And we think… we think the ritual has already begun.”

“Right. Let’s not waste another minute, then.” She adjusts her grip on her staff. “How do you propose we proceed?”

“You take point, Alistair.” Hawke suggests. “I’ll bring up the rear.”

Alistair nods, unsheathing his sword and taking up his shield. He swallows hard, then takes his first step on to the bridge. Maybe they’ll get lucky, and it will turn out everyone has gathered for a lovely surprise birthday party for Corypheus. Although, come to think of it, a birthday party for an ancient Darkspawn would most likely _also_ involve some gruesome blood magic. Whether it would be preferable to a mysterious Tevinter cult ritual is anybody’s guess.

***

Less than half an hour later, Alistair stares down at the Warden corpses sprawled on the ground, their blue and silver armor soaked with red. The sharp, electric smell that always seems to pervade Fade rifts still lingers in the air, mingling with the metallic tang of blood pooling amidst the cracks in the cobblestones. Here and there the ground is peppered with black scorch marks, the only remnant of the pride demons they’ve just killed. For a long moment, the only sound is the desert wind whistling through the cracks in the battlements. And of course, the Calling. Always the Calling.

Not all of the Wardens fell at their hands. To one side is a line of bodies, all laid out carefully, their hands crossed upon their chests, their eyes pressed shut in their still faces. Their air of peaceful slumber is belied by the bloody wounds yawning below their jawlines. Whoever arranged them did so with respect. Alistair presumes it was the other Wardens. Certainly it couldn’t have been Erimond, Void take his worthless soul. Most of the Wardens had willingly allowed the others to slit their throats, thinking to the last they were following the Warden creed. In death, sacrifice. Erimond’s words echo mockingly in his mind. _This was all of their own free will._

Alistair clenches his jaw hard. He doesn’t know if he’s on the verge of hysterical laughter or a scream of despair.

“Foolishness.” A clear voice breaks into his thoughts. “How could anyone think blood magic to be a solution to anything?”

The Inquisitor is walking towards him, picking her way delicately through the chaos. Her dark eyes are full of grave disapproval. Alistair feels a startling urge to shake that look of self-righteousness right off her smug face. Trevelyan barely looks old enough to be let outside without a chaperone. Her head is still full of Chantry tales where the good triumph over evil purely through their own faith and the grace of the Maker. What does she know of the burden of sacrifice? The callous expectation from an ungrateful people that you are ever willing to shed your blood for the greater good? The bleak knowledge that your life will be a relentless onslaught of violence, and that you will be denied peace even in the final moments before your death?

He forces himself to remain silent while he wrestles his temper under control, afraid he will say something he will have cause to regret. “The Wardens were wrong,” he admits through gritted teeth. “But they had their reasons.”

“Everyone who turns to blood magic has their _reasons_.”

Hawke’s words vibrate with scorn and barely suppressed fury. He turns to see her looking at the dead, her mouth drawn into a tight line, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. Then she looks up at him, her eyes dark and stormy. Her open anger feels like a slap in the face.

“Everyone has their reasons,” she repeats. Then she exhales, and the rage abruptly seems to drain out of her, leaving only emptiness. “It never matters. In the end, we are all alone with our actions.”

Varric moves closer to Hawke, puts his hand on her back. Alistair almost laughs in disbelief. Why does _she_ need comfort? She is not the one who has just witnessed her brethren slaughtering each other at the behest of a demented Tevinter cultist. He closes his eyes in a vain attempt to block it all out. The memory of bloodshed is still vivid in his mind, the Calling an aptly sinister accompaniment floating in the background. Perhaps it is a twisted blessing that the Warden mages are now completely under the thrall of Corypheus. How else would they be able to live with what they’ve done?

“That bastard Erimond got away,” Blackwall remarks gruffly, breaking the tense silence. “Did anyone see where he went?”

Alistair straightens his stance, forces himself to focus. A long-forgotten tidbit of lore has suddenly sprung to mind, some random bit of history Duncan must have mentioned in passing when Alistair was still a Warden in training. He mentally slaps himself for not having thought of it before.

“I think I might know where Erimond has gone.” He gestures to the east. “There is an ancient Warden fortress here, called Adamant. It’s been abandoned for centuries. It seems likely that the Wardens might be gathering there.”

Blackwall grunts, swiveling to squint in the direction Alistair has indicated, his expression signaling neither agreement nor disagreement. The Inquisitor is already shaking her head. “It would be suicide for us to approach an occupied Warden fortress, even one in a state of disrepair, without reinforcements.”

“Alistair and I will scout ahead to Adamant and gather what information we can.” Hawke declares without even bothering to look in his direction. “We will meet you back at Skyhold.”

Her hands are on her hips, and her demeanor is now brusque and businesslike. She is not asking the Inquisitor’s permission, but nonetheless Trevelyan graciously inclines her head as if granting it. “Thank you, Hawke. Warden. Maker guide your path.”

Once the Inquisitor and her companions have left, Alistair stares at Hawke, unsure of what to say. He wants to shout at her, plead with her, convince her that the Wardens can still be saved from themselves, but part of him doesn’t even believe this anymore. Turning to blood magic is bad enough, but killing your own companions… to summon demons. How can anyone believe any good could come of such a decision? The Wardens are terrified and driven half mad by the Calling, he knows this better than anyone, but even so… he struggles to justify their actions, even to himself. Is what happened here today the death knell for the Order? Does it even matter what they find at Adamant at this point?

Hawke is uncharacteristically quiet, staring at the dead Wardens with a carefully blank expression on her face. He feels a sudden surge of fury in his heart as he looks at her. Surely, part of the blame lies at her feet. If she had just _listened_ to him all those years ago, when he’d first questioned her about Corypheus, instead of allowing herself to be blinded by her own arrogance. If she had left well enough alone, instead of recklessly freeing this ancient evil through her sheer ignorance, allowing it to gather its strength all these years while the rest of the world went about its business, blissfully ignorant of their impending doom.

“We should give them a proper send off.”

Alistair blinks, pulled out of his spiral of dark thoughts by Hawke’s abrupt pronouncement. “What?”

She gestures at the bodies. “We obviously don’t have time for individual pyres, but… anything would be better than leaving them for the vultures.”

His chest constricts with shame at her words, and he rubs his face with a muffled groan. “Thank you,” he mumbles, afraid to say anything more.

They work silently, lining the bodies in two neat rows, placing what weapons they can find in the dead Wardens’ limp hands crossed upon their chests. Once they are done, Hawke gestures for Alistair to back away. They stand side by side in the entrance archway that connects the tower to the bridge. Hawke raises her staff with one hand, gestures sharply with the other, and a line of flame sweeps through the corpses almost instantly.

The blaze roars with unnatural energy, so fiercely that Alistair feels like the skin on his face is about to blister. But he forces himself not to flinch. He watches the fire consume the Wardens, murdered and murderers alike, all slowly being reduced to charcoal and ash. The red and orange flames seem to writhe and flicker in time to the sinister cacophony of the Calling streaming through his head. Dark thoughts snap at the edges of his consciousness, like hungry wolves circling vulnerable prey. But he keeps them resolutely at bay, letting the fierce heat and deafening crackling of flame overwhelm his senses until there is no room for thought.

Eventually, the bodies are nothing but blackened remains, barely resembling anything human. Alistair realizes with a start that it’s almost twilight. Black smoke wafts lazily skyward, dissipating against the backdrop of a blue sky just beginning to shift into the warmer hues of sunset.

Hawke is standing as still as a statue, both hands gripping her staff in front of her. Her face is pale beneath her sunburn, her eyes tight with exhaustion. It takes a moment for Alistair to realize why. There had been no wood for the funeral pyre. The only fuel feeding the fire was Hawke’s magic, and to maintain a fire hot enough and long enough to burn ten human bodies to ash would have taken more magic than most mages could ever hope to summon, let alone sustain.

“Hawke.” He speaks hesitantly, unsure whether she will welcome any concern on his part.

She looks at him and straightens, her face betraying nothing as she glances briefly at the sky. “Do you think we have enough daylight left to make it to Adamant?”

Alistair nods slowly. “From here, it shouldn’t take more than an hour on foot. Hopefully we can approach it from a direction that doesn’t take us to their front doorstep.” He shakes his head. “Though judging from their behavior here, it doesn’t look like they’re bothering to set up sentries.” Because this is a suicide mission, he silently finishes the thought. And they know it

Hawke gives him a sharp look, almost as if she’s heard his internal misgivings, but she doesn’t comment. Instead she gives a short nod. “Let’s go, then.”

They silently set off in the direction of Adamant. The smell of blood mingled with burnt flesh lingers in his nostrils long after they’ve left the tower behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always thought the Warden character in Inquisition seemed rather blase in their reaction to witnessing the blood magic ritual for the first time. You'd think they'd be a little bit more traumatized.


End file.
